The   Library 

of 

Literary   History 


of   K 


A     LITERARY     HISTORY    OF    INDIA.      By     R.    W. 
FRAZER,  LL.B. 

A  LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  IRELAND.    By  DOUGLAS 
HYDE,  LL.D. 

LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA.     By  BARRETT 
WENDELL. 

Other   Volumes  in  Preparation. 

A     LITERARY     HISTORY      OF      THE      JEWS.       By 
ISRAEL  ABRAHAMS. 


ETC. 


ETC. 


ETC. 


There  is  for  every  nation  a  history,  which  does  not  respond  to  the 
trumpet-call  of  battle,  which  does  not  limit  its  interests  to  the  conflict  of 
dynasties.  This  —  the  history  of  intellectual  growth  and  artistic  achievement 
—  if  less  romantic  than  the  popular  panorama  of  kings  and  queens,  finds  its 
material  in  imperishable  masterpieces,  and  reveals  to  the  student  something 
at  once  more  vital  and  more  picturesque  than  the  quarrels  of  rival  parlia 
ments.  Nor  is  it  in  any  sense  unscientific  to  shift  the  point  of  view  from 
politics  to  literature.  It  is  but  a  fashion  of  history  which  insists  that  a 
nation  lives  only  for  her  warriors,  a  fashion  which  might  long  since  have 
been  ousted  by  the  commonplace  reflection  that,  iu  spite  of  history,  the  poets 
are  the  true  masters  of  the  earth.  If  all  record  of  a  nation's  progress  were 
blotted  out,  and  its  literature  were  yet  left  us,  might  we  not  recover  the  out 
lines  of  its  lost  history  ? 

It  is,  then,  with  the  literature  of  nations,  that  the  present  series  is 
concerned. 

Each  volume  will  be  entrusted  to  a  distinguished  scholar,  and  the  aid  of 
foreign  men  of  letters  will  be  invited  whenever  the  perfection  of  the  series 
demands  it. 


THE     LIBRARY 

OF 
LITER  ART  HISTORT 


A  Literary  History  of  America 


A  *  Literary    History 
of  America* 


„ 

Barrett  Wendell 

M 

Professor  of   English  at  Harvard  College 


FOURTH    EDITION 


&* 

New   York 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons 

1905 


Copyright, 
BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

All  rights  reserved 


UNIVERSITY    PRESS         JOHN    WILSON 
AND    SON     •    CAMBRIDGE,     U.S.A. 


Contents 


PAGE 
INTRODUCTION 

BOOK    I 
THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

I.    ENGLISH  HISTORY  FROM   1600  TO  1700 13 

II.    ENGLISH  LITERATURE  FROM   1600  TO  1700 20 

III.  AMERICAN  HISTORY  FROM   1600  TO  1700 26 

IV.  LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  FROM  1600  TO  1700       ...  35 
V.    COTTON  MATHER 44 

VI.    SUMMARY .     .  *    55 

BOOK    II 
THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

I.    ENGLISH  HISTORY  FROM  1700  TO  180-0 59 

II.    ENGLISH  LITERATURE  FROM   1700  TO  1800       ....  65 

III.  AMERICAN  HISTORY  FROM  1700  TO  1800 70 

IV.  LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  FROM  1700  TO  1776     ...  78 
V.    JONATHAN  EDWARDS 83 

VI.    BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  ....:- 92 

VII.    THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 104 

VIII.   LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  FROM  1776  TO  1800     .     .     .  117 

IX.    SUMMARY ....136 


x  CONTENTS 

,» 

BOOK   III 

THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

PAGE 

I.    ENGLISH  HISTORY  SINCE  1800 139 

II.    ENGLISH  LITERATURE  SINCE  1800 .     ,  145 

III.  AMERICAN  HISTORY  SINCE  1800 149 

IV.  LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  SINCE  1800 154 

BOOK    IV 

LITERATURE  IN   THE   MIDDLE   STATES   FROM 
1798  TO   1857 

I.    CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN ,     „     .  157 

II.    WASHINGTON  IRVING 169 

III.  JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 181 

IV.  WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 19* 

V.    EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 204 

VI.    THE  KNICKERBOCKER  SCHOOL 219 

BOOK   V 

THE   RENAISSANCE    OF   NEW   ENGLAND 

I.    SOME  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND       .  233 

II.    THE  NEW  ENGLAND  ORATORS 246 

III.  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  .     .     .  260 

IV.  UNITARIANISM 277 

V.    TRANSCENDENTALISM 290 

VI.    RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 311 

VII.    THE  LESSER  MEN  OF  CONCORD 328 

VIII.    THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT     , 339 


A  Literary  History  of  America 


A  Literary  History  of  America 


INTRODUCTION 

LITERATURE,  like  its  most  excellent  phase,  poetry,  has  never 
been  satisfactorily  defined.  In  essence  it  is  too  subtle,  too 
elusive,  too  vital,  to  be  confined  within  the  limits  of  phrase. 
Yet  everybody  vaguely  knows  what  it  is.  Everybody  knows 
that  human  life,  in  its  endless,  commonplace,  unfathomable 
complexity,  impresses  human  beings  in  ways  which  vary  not 
only  with  individuals,  but  with  the  generations  and  the  nations. 
Somewhere  in  the  oldest  English  writings  there  is  an  allegory 
which  has  never  faded.  Of  a  night,  it  tells  us,  a  little  group 
was  gathered  about  the  fireside  in  a  hall  where  the  flicker  of 
flame  cast  light  on  some  and  threw  others  into  shadow,  but 
none  into  shadow  so  deep  as  the  darkness  without.  And  into 
the  window  from  the  midst  of  the  night  flew  a  swallow  lured 
by  the  light ;  but  unable  by  reason  of  his  wildness  to  linger 
among  men,  he  sped  across  the  hall  and  so  out  again  into  the 
dark,  and  was  seen  no  more.  To  this  day,  as  much  as  when 
the  old  poet  first  saw  or  fancied  it,  the  swallow's  flight  remains 
an  image  of  earthly  life.  From  whence  we  know  not,  we  come 
into  the  wavering  light  and  gusty  warmth  of  this  world  ;  but 
here  the  law  of  our  being  forbids  that  we  remain.  A  little  we 
may  see,  fancying  that  we  understand,  —  the  hall,  the  lords 
and  the  servants,  the  chimney  and  the  feast ;  more  we  may 
feel,  —  the  light  and  the  warmth,  the  safety  and  the  danger, 
the  hope  and  the  dread.  Then  we  must  forth  again,  into  the 


2**'     ** LttE&AFft  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

voiceless,  unseen  eternities.  But  the  fleeting  moments  of  life, 
like  the  swallow's  flight  once  more,  are  not  quite  voiceless  ;  as 
surely  as  he  may  twitter  in  the  ears  of  men,  so  men  themselves 
may  give  sign  to  one  another  of  what  they  think  they  know,  and 
of  what  they  know  they  feel.  More  too  ;  men  have  learned 
to  record  these  signs,  so  that  long  after  they  are  departed, 
others  may  guess  what  their  life  meant.  These  records  are 
often  set  forth  in  terms  which  may  be  used  only  by  those 
of  rarely  special  gift  and  training, — the  terms  of  architecture 
and  sculpture,  of  painting  and  music ;  but  oftener  and  more 
freely  they  are  phrased  in  the  terms  which  all  men  learn 
somehow  to  use,  —  the  terms  of  language.  Some  of  these 
records,  and  most,  are  of  so  little  moment  that  they  are  soon 
neglected  and  forgotten ;  others,  like  the  fancied  story  of  the 
swallow,  linger  through  the  ages.  It  is  to  these  that  we  give 
the  name  of  literature.  Literature  is  the  lasting  expression  in 
words  of  the  meaning  of  life. 

Any  definition  is  the  clearer  for  examples.  To  make  sure 
of  ours,  then,  we  may  well  recall  a  few  names  which  un 
doubtedly  illustrate  it.  The  Psalms  are  literature,  so  is  the 
Iliad,  so  are  the  Epistles  of  Saint  Paul,  so  is  the  ^Eneid,  and  the 
Divine  Comedy,  and  Don  Quixote,  and  Hamlet.  These  few 
names  are  enough  to  remind  us  not  only  of  what  literature  is, 
but  also  of  the  fact  which  most  distinguishes  it  from  other  arts 
of  expression.  The  lines  and  colours  which  embody  architec 
ture,  sculpture,  and  painting,  can  be  understood  by  anybody 
with  eyes.  Though  to  people  like  ourselves,  who  have  grown 
up  amid  the  plastic  traditions  of  classical  antiquity  and  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  an  Egyptian  painting  or  a  Japanese  print  looks 
odd,  it  remains,  even  to  us,  comprehensible.  The  Psalms,  on 
the  other  hand,  were  written  in  Hebrew,  the  Iliad  and  the 
Epistles  in  dialects  of  Greek,  the  ^Eneid  was  written  in  Latin, 
the  Divine  Comedy  in  Italian,  Don  Quixote  in  Spanish,  and 
Hamlet  in  Elizabethan  English;  except  through  the  unsatis 
factory  medium  of  translation  one  and  all  must  be  sealed 


INTRODUCTION  3 

books  to  those  who  do  not  know  the  languages  native  to  the 
men  who  phrased  them.  World-old  legends,  after  all,  are 
the  wisest ;  the  men  who  fled  from  Babel  could  each  see  in 
the  deserted  tower  a  monument  of  impious  aspiration,  but  this 
thought  of  each  was  sealed  from  the  rest  by  the  confusion  of 
tongues.  So  to  this  day  literature  is  of  all  fine  arts  the  most 
ineradicably  national. 

Here  again  we  come  to  a  word  so  simple  and  so  frequent 
that  an  important  phase  of  its  meaning  is  often  overlooked. 
Nationality  is  generally  conceived  to  be  a  question  of  race,  of 
descent,  of  blood ;  and  yet  in  human  experience  there  is  a  cir 
cumstance  perhaps  more  potent  in  binding  men  together  than 
any  physical  tie.  That  old  legend  of  Babel  tells  the  story. 
The  confusion  of  tongues  broke  every  bond  of  common  kinship  ; 
the  races  which  should  hold  together  through  the  centuries 
sprang  afresh  from  men  who  newly  spoke  and  newly  thought 
and  newly  felt  in  terms  of  common  language.  For  these  lan 
guages  which  we  speak  grow  more  deeply  than  anything  else  to 
be  a  part  of  our  mental  habit  who  use  them.  It  is  in  terms  of 
language  that  we  think  even  about  the  commonplaces  of  life, 
—  what  we  shall  eat,  what  we  shall  wear,  whom  we  shall  care 
for ;  in  terms  of  language  too,  and  in  no  others,  we  formulate 
the  ideals  which  consciously,  and  perhaps  still  more  uncon 
sciously,  guide  our  conduct  and  our  aspirations.  In  a  strange, 
subtle  way  each  language  grows  to  associate  with  itself  the 
ideals  and  the  aspirations  and  the  fate  of  those  peoples  with- 
whose  life  it  is  inextricably  intermingled. 

Languages  grow  and  live  and  die  in  accordance  with  laws 
of  their  own,  not  perfectly  understood,  which  need  not  now 
detain  us.  This  English  of  ours,  with  which  alone  we  are 
immediately  concerned,  may  be  taken  as  typical.  Originating, 
one  can  hardly  say  precisely  when  or  how,  from  the  union  and 
confusion  of  older  tongues,  it  has  struggled  through  the  infan 
tile  diseases  of  dialect,  each  of  which  has  left  some  trace,  until 
long  ago  it  not  only  had  become  the  sole  means  of  expression 


4  LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

for  millions  of  people,  but  also  had  assumed  the  literary  form 
which  now  makes  its  literature  in  some  respects  the  most 
considerable  of  modern  times.  Whatever  else,  this  literature 

'is  the  most  spontaneous,  the  least  formal  and  conscious,  the 
most  instinctively  creative,  the  most  free  from  the  rankness 
and  the  debility  of  extreme  culture,  and  so  seemingly  the  most 
normal.  Its  earliest  forms  were  artless  ;  songs  and  sayings 
began  to  stray  from  oral  tradition  into  written  record,  laws 
were  sometimes  phrased  and  chronicles  made  in  the  robust 
young  terms  which  carried  meaning  to  unlearned  folks  as  well 
as  to  those  versed  in  more  polite  tongues.  By  and  by  came 
forms  of  literature  which  at  least  comparatively  were  artistic, 
influenced  by  an  impulse  of  writers  and  of  readers  too  towards 
expression  for  expression's  sake.  The  earliest  of  these  which 
has  lasted  in  general  literary  memory  reached  its  height  in  the 
work  of  Chaucer.  After  his  time  came  a  century  or  more  of 
civil  disturbance,  when  Englishmen  were  too  busy  with  wars 
of  the  Roses  and  the  like  for  further  progress  in  the  arts  of 
peace.  Then,  with  the  new  national  integrity  which  grew 
under  the  Tudors,  came  a  fresh  and  stronger  literary  impulse, 
unsurpassed  in  vigorous  spontaneity. 

f  In  1575  there  was  hardly  such  a  thing  as  modern  English 
literature;  in  1625  that  great  body  of  English  literature  which 
we  call  Elizabethan  was  complete.  Fifty  years  had  given  us 
not  only  incomparable  lyric  verse  and  the  final  version  of  the 
Bible,  but  the  work  too  of  Spenser,  of  Shakspere  and  the  other 
great  dramatists,  of  Hooker,  of  Ralegh,  of  Bacon,  and  of  all 
their  fellows.  Among  these,  of  course,  Shakspere  stands  su 
preme,  just  as  Chaucer  stood  among  his  contemporaries  whose 
names  are  now  forgotten  by  all  but  special  scholars ;  and  one 
feature  of  Shakspere's  supremacy  is  that  his  literary  career  was 
normal.  Whoever  has  followed  it  from  his  experimental  be 
ginning,  through  the  ripeness  to  which  he  brought  comedy, 
history,  and  tragedy  alike,  to  its  placid  close  amid  the  growing 
languor  of  freshly  established  tradition,  will  have  learned  some- 


INTRODUCTION  5 

thing  more  than  even  the  great  name  of  Shakspere  includes,  — 
he  will  have  had  a  glimpse  of  the  natural  law  which  not 
only  governed  the  course  of  Shakspere  himself  and  of  Eliza 
bethan  literature,  but  has  governed  in  the  past  and  will  govern 
in  the  future  the  growth,  development,  and  decline  of  all 
literature  and  of  all  fine  art  whatsoever.  Lasting  literature  has 
its  birth  when  a  creative  impulse,  which  we  may  call  imagi 
native,  moves  men  to  break  the  shackles  of  tradition,  making 
things  which  have  not  been  before ;  sooner  or  later  this  im 
pulse  is  checked  by  a  growing  sense  of  the  inexorable  limits 
of  fact  and  of  language ;  and  then  creative  imagination  sinks 
into  some  new  tradition,  to  be  broken  only  when,  in  time  to 
come,  the  vital  force  of  imagination  shall  revive. 

As  English  literature  has  grown  into  maturity,  the  working 
of  this  law  throughout  its  course  has  become  evident.  The 
first  impulse,  we  have  seen,  gave  us  the  work  of  Chaucer ; 
the  second,  which  came  only  after  generations,  gave  us  the 
Elizabethan  lyrics  and  dramas,  Spenser  and  Shakspere,  and 
the  final  form  of  the  English  Bible.  This  last  is  probably  the 
greatest  masterpiece  of  translation  in  the  world;  it  has  ex 
ercised  on  the  thought  and  the  language  of  English-speaking 
people  an  influence  which  cannot  be  overestimated,  As  a 
translation,  however,  it  rather  indicates  how  eager  Elizabethan 
Englishmen  were  to  know  the  splendours  of  world-old  liter 
ature,  than  reveals  a  spontaneous  impulse  towards  native  ex 
pression.  Apart  from  this  supreme  work,  the  fully  developed 
literature  of  the  Elizabethan  period  took  on  the  whole  the 
form  of  poetry ;  that  of  the  eighteenth  century,  on  the  other 
hand,  took  on  the  whole  the  form  of  prose;  and  as  English 
prose  literature  has  developed,  no  phase  of  it  has  developed 
more  highly  than  its  fiction.  Vaguely  general  though  this 
statement  be,  it  is  perhaps  enough  to  indicate  an  important 
general  tendency.  The  first  form  in  which  the  normal  liter 
ature  of  any  language  develops  is  instinctively  poetic ;  prose 
comes  later;  and  prose  fiction,  that  intricate  combination  of 


6  LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

poetic  impulse  with  prosaic  form,  comes  later  still.  In  1625 
English  literature  was  fully  developed  only  in  the  forms  of  lyric 
and  dramatic  poetry. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  the  America  with  which  we 
shall  be  concerned  came  into  existence.  It  began  with  a 
number  of  mutually  independent  settlements,  each  of  which 
grew  into  something  like  political  integrity.  When  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States  was  adopted,  somewhat  more  than 
a  hundred  years  ago,  the  sentiment  of  local  sovereignty  in  the 
separate  States  was  accordingly  too  strong  to  allow  the  federal 
power  to  assume  an  independent  name.  As  the  power  thus 
founded  developed  into  one  of  the  most  considerable  in  modern 
history,  its  citizens  found  themselves  driven  by  this  unique  fact 
of  national  namelessness  to  a  custom  which,  if  misunderstood, 
is  often  held  presumptuous ;  they  called  themselves  Ameri 
cans,  a  name  geographically  proper  to  all  natives  of  the  West 
ern  Hemisphere,  from  Canada  to  Patagonia.  By  this  time 
the  custom  thus  historically  established  has  given  to  the  name 
"America"  the  sense  in  which  we  generally  use  it.  The 
America  with  whose  literary  history  we  are  to  be  concerned 
is  only  that  part  of  the  American  continent  which  is  dominated 
by  the  English-speaking  people  now  subject  to  the  govern 
ment  of  the  United  States. 

A  literary  history  of  America,  then,  should  concern  itself 
with  such  lasting  expressions  in  words  of  the  meaning  of  life 
as  this  people  has v  uttered  during  its  three  centuries  of 
growingly  independent  existence ;  or,  in  simpler  terms,  with 
what  America  has  contributed  to  the  literature  of  the  English 
language. 

Accidents  of  chronology  though  the  centuries  of  any  era  must 
be,  they  prove  in  such  study  as  ours  convenient  divisions  of 
time,  at  once  easy  to  remember  and  characteristically  distinct. 
In  the  history  of  America,  at  least,  each  century  has  traits  of  its 
own.  In  1600  there  was  no  such  thing  as  English-speaking 
America;  in  1700  all  but  one  of  the  colonies  which  have 


INTRODUCTION  7 

developed  into  the  United  States  were  finally  established,  and 
the  English  conquest  of  the  middle  colonies  founded  by  the 
Dutch  or  the  Swedes  was  virtually  complete.  In  1700  every 
one  of  the  American  colonies  was  loyally  subject  to  the  gov 
ernment  of  King  William  III.;  in  1800  there  remained 
throughout  them  no  vestige  of  British  authority.  In  1800, 
the  last  complete  year  of  the  presidency  of  John  Adams,  the 
United  States  were  still  an  experiment  in  government  of  which 
the  result  remained  in  doubt;  the  year  1900  has  found  them, 
whatever  else,  a  power  which  seems  as  established  and  as 
important  as  any  in  the  world.  Clearly  these  three  centuries  .' 
of  American  history  are  at  least  as  distinct  as  three  generations 
in  any  race. 

Again,  though  the  political  crises  which  decided  the  dis 
tinct  features  of  these  centuries  were  far  from  coincident  with 
the  centuries  themselves,  the  typical  American  character  of 
the  seventeenth  century  differed  from  that  of  the  eighteenth, 
and  that  of  the  eighteenth  from  that  of  the  nineteenth,  as 
distinctly  as  the  historical  limits  of  these  centuries  differed 
one  from  the  other.  In  the  seventeenth  century  the  typical 
American,  a  man  of  English-speaking  race,  seemed  to  him 
self  an  immigrant  hardly  at  home  in  the  remote  regions  where 
his  exiled  life  was  perforce  to  be  passed.  In  the  eighteenth 
century  the  typical  American,  still  English  at  heart,  was  so 
far  in  descent  from  the  immigration  that  almost  unawares  his 
personal  ties  with  the  mother  country  had  been  broken.  By 
tradition,  perhaps,  he  knew  from  what  part  of  the  old  world 
his  ancestors  had  come,  but  that  old  home  itself  had  probably 
both  lost  all  such  traditions  of  those  ancestors  and  ceased  to 
feel  even  curiosity  about  their  descendants.  For  better  or 
worse,  this  new  America  had  become  the  only  real  home  ot 
its  natives.  In  the  nineteenth  century  the  typical  American, 
politically  as  well  as  personally  independent  of  the  old  world, 
and  English  only  so  far  as  the  traditions  inseparable  from  an 
cestral  law  and  language  must  keep  him  so,  has  often  felt  or 


8  LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

fancied  himself  less  at  one  with  contemporary  Englishmen 
than  with  Europeans  of  other  and  essentially  foreign  blood. 

Yet,  English  or  not,  we  Americans  are  English-speaking 
still ;  and  English-speaking  we  must  always  remain.  An 
accident  of  language  and  nothing  more,  this  fact  may  seem 
to  many.  To  those  who  think  more  deeply  it  can  hardly  fail 
to  mean  that  for  better  or  worse  the  ideals  which  underlie  our 
blundering  conscious  life  must  always  be  the  ideals  which 
underlie  the  conscious  life  of  the  mother  country,  and  which 
for  centuries  have  rectified  and  purified  her  blunders.  Morally 
and  religiously  these  ideals  are  immortally  consecrated  in  King 
'  James's  version  of  the  Bible ;  legally  and  politically  these 
ideals  are  grouped  in  that  great  legal  system  which,  in  distinc 
tion  from  the  Canon  Law  or  the  Civil,  may  broadly  be  called 
the  Common  Law  of  England.  What  these  ideals  are,  every 
one  bred  in  the  traditions  of  our  ancestral  language  instinctively 
knows ;  but  such  knowledge  is  hard  to  phrase.  Perhaps  we 
come  as  near  as  may  be  to  truth  when  we  say  that  in  their 
moral  aspect  the  ideals  which  underlie  our  language  are  com 
prised  in  a  profound  conviction  that,  whatever  our  station  or 
our  shortcomings,  each  of  us  is  bound  to  do  right ;  and  that 
in  their  legal  aspect  these  ideals  may  similarly  be  summarised 
in  the  statement  that  we  are  bound  on  earth  to  maintain  our 
rights.  But  the  rights  contemplated  by  our  ancestral  law  are 
no  abstract  ones  ;  they  are  those  which  the  gradually  varying 
custom  and  experience  of  the  centuries  have  proved  in  actual 
exercise  to  be  safely  favourable  to  the  public  and  private  wel 
fare  of  men  like  ourselves. 

Vague  and  general  as  all  this  may  seem,  it  has  lately  come 
to  possess  significance  hardly  paralleled  since  at  the  beginning 
of  our  Christian  era  the  imperial  power,  the  law  and  the  lan 
guage,  of  Rome  dominated  what  was  then  the  world.  Our  law 
and  our  language,  our  ideals  and  our  vital  energies,  which  had 
their  earliest  origin  in  England,  are  at  this  moment  struggling 
for  world-existence  with  what  else  in  ideals,  in  law,  and  in  Ian- 


1 


INTRODUCTION  9 

guage  have  developed  themselves  otherwise  in  modern  time. 
Yet  for  a  century  or  more  the  two  great  English-speaking 
races,  the  native  English  and  that  of  independent  America,  have 
been  so  disunited  that  each  has  often  seemed  to  the  other  more 
hostile  than  many  an  alien.  There  are  no  feuds  fiercer  than 
the  feuds  of  kindred.  As  we  pursue  our  study,  we  shall  per 
haps  see  how  this  breach  between  the  two  branches  of  our 
race  has  grown.  In  brief,  from  the  first  settlement  of  Virginia 
until  the  moment  when  the  guns  of  Admiral  Dewey  brought  ^ 
America  unawares  but  fatally  face  to  face  with  the  problem 
of  Asiatic  empire,  there  has  never  been  an  instant  when  to 
native  Englishmen  and  to  English-speaking  Americans  the 
great  political  problems  have  presented  themselves  in  the  same  , 
terms.  To-day  at  last  there  is  little  difference.  To-day,  then, 
the  disunion  of  sympathy  which  for  a  century  and  more  has 
kept  Americans  apart  from  the  native  English  takes  on  world 
wide  significance. 

An  important  phase  of  our  study  must  accordingly  be  that  r 
which  attempts  to  trace  and  to  understand  the  changes  in  the! 
native  character  of  the  Americans  and  of  the  English,  which  I 
so  long  resulted  in  disunion  of  national  sentiment.     We  cany 
scrutinise  them,   however,    only  as    they    appear    in    literary  \ 
history,  and  mostly  in  that  of  America.     For  our  chief  business 
concerns  only  the  question  of  what  contributions  America  has 
made,  during  its  three  centuries,  to  the  literature  of  the  Eng 
lish  language. 

Recurring  to  our  rough,  convenient  division  of  native 
Americans  into  the  three  types  which  correspond  to  these  three 
centuries  of  American  history,  we  can  instantly  perceive  that 
only  the  last,  the  Americans  of  the  nineteenth  century,  have 
produced  literature  of  any  importance.  The  novelists  and  the 
historians,  the  essayists  and  the  poets,  whose  names  come  to 
mind  when  American  literature  is  mentioned,  have  all  flourished 
since  1800.  The  greater  part  of  our  study,  then,  must  con 
cern  the  century  just  at  an  end.  For  all  that,  the  two  earlier 


io         LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

centuries  were  not  sterile,;  rather  indeed  the  amount  of  native 
American  writing  which  each  produced  is  surprising.  What 
is  more,  the  American  writings  of  the  eighteenth  century  dif 
fered  from  those  of  the  seventeenth  quite  as  distinctly  as  did 
the  American  history  or  the  American  character.  Of  both  cen 
turies,  meanwhile,  two  things  are  true  :  neither  in  itself  pre 
sents  .much  literary  variety,  and  most  of  what  was  published  in 
each  has  already  been  forgotten.  Our  task,  then,  is  becoming 
plainer ;  it  is  to  glance  at  the  literary  history  of  America  dur 
ing  the  seventeenth  century  and  the  eighteenth,  and  to  study, 
with  what  detail  proves  possible,  that  literary  history  during  the 
past  hundred  years. 

From  all  this,  too,  an  obvious  method  of  proceeding  begins 
to  define  itself.  Taking  each  century  in  turn,  we  may  con 
veniently  begin  by  reminding  ourselves  briefly  of  what  it  con 
tributed  to  the  history  and  to  the  literature  of  England.  With 
this  in  mind  we  may  better  understand  a  similar  but  more 
minute  study  of  America  during  each  of  the  three  periods  in 
question.  When  we  come  to  the  last  and  most  important  of 
these,  the  nineteenth  century,  we  may  find  ourselves  a  little 
troubled  by  the  fact  that  so  much  of  it  is  almost  contemporary 
with  ourselves.  Contemporary  life  is  never  quite  ripe  for 
history  j  facts  cannot  at  once  range  themselves  in  true  per 
spective  ;  and  when  these  facts  are  living  men  and  women, 
there  is  a  touch  of  inhumanity  in  writing  of  them  as  if  we  had 
already  had  the  misfortune  to  lose  them.  In  these  straits  one 
decision  seems  unavoidable,  —  so  far  as  our  study  concerns  in 
dividuals,  we  must  confine  it  to  those  who  are  no  longer  liv 
ing.  Unhappily  the  list  has  so  swollen  that  these  should 
prove  quite  enough  for  our  main  purpose.  For  this,  we 
should  constantly  remember,  is  chiefly  to  discern  what,  if  any 
thing,  America  has  so  far  contributed  to  the  literature  of  our 
ancestral  English  language. 


BOOK  I 

THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY 


BOOK    I 
THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

I 

ENGLISH  HISTORY  FROM  l60Q  TO  IJOO 

WHATEVER  else  people  remember  about  seventeenth-century 
England,  they  will  pretty  surely  know  the  names  of  the  sover 
eigns  who  came  to  the  throne.  In  1600  the  reign  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  was  drawing  to  its  close.  After  her  came  the 
pragmatic  Scotchman,  James  I.  After  him  came  Charles  I., 
whose  tragic  fate  has  combined  with  the  charm  of  his  portraits 
to  make  him  at  least  a  pathetically  romantic  hero.  Then 
came  Cromwell,  quite  as  sovereign  in  his  fleeting  Common 
wealth  as  ever  king  was  in  monarchy.  Then  came  Charles 
II.,  with  all  the  license  of  the  Restoration ;  then  James  II., 
ousted  in  less  than  five  years  by  the  Glorious  Revolution ; 
finally  came  the  Dutch  Prince  of  Orange  with  his  Eng 
lish  Queen,  royal  in  England  only  by  glorious  revolutionary 
grace.  Seven  sovereigns  in  all  we  find,  if  we  count  William 
and  Mary  together;  and  of  these  only  six  were  technically 
royal.  Of  the  six  royalties,  four  were  Stuarts,  who  came  in 
the  middle  of  the  list ;  and  the  Stuart  dynasty  was  broken 
midway  by  the  apparition  of  Cromwell,  the  one  English 
sovereign  not  of  royal  blood  and  dignity.  Literally,  then, 
Cromwell  may  be  termed  the  central  figure  of  English  history 
during  the  seventeenth  century. 

It  is  in  the  full  literary  spirit  of  that  period  to  remark  this 
fantastic   fact   as   if  it   were   significant,   saying   that  just   as 


I4  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Cromwell  stands  central  in  the  list  of  those  who  during  the 
seventeenth  century  of  our  Christian  era  were  sovereign  in 
Protestant  England,  so  in  the  eyes  of  them  who  seek  among 
these  a  fitting  centre  for  their  thoughts  and  meditations  he 
proves  central  too.  Love  him  or  hate  him,  reverence  or 
detest  his  memory,  one  fact  you  must  grant :  never  before  in 
English  history  had  men  seen  dominant  the  type  of  which 
he  is  the  great  representative ;  never  since  his  time  have 
they  again  seen  that  dominant  type,  now  irrevocably  van 
ished  with  the  world  which  brought  it  forth,  —  the  type  of 
the  dominant  Puritan. 

The  Puritan  character,  of  course,  is  too  permanently  Eng 
lish  to  be  confined  to  any  single  period  of  English  history. 
Throughout  English  records  we  may  find  it,  first  gathering  the 
force  which  led  to  its  momentary  sovereignty,  and  later,  even 
to  our  own  time,  affecting  the  whole  course  of  English  life 
and  thought.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  however,  Puritanism 
for  a  while  acquired  the  unique  importance  of  national  domi 
nance,  which  it  proved  politically  unable  to  maintain  beyond 
the  lifetime  of  its  chief  exponent.  A  religious  system,  one 
generally  thinks  it ;  and  rightly,  for  it  was  profoundly  actuated 
by  conscious  religious  motives,  and  by  passionate  devotion  to 
that  system  of  Christian  theology  which  is  known  by  the  name 
of  Calvin.  A  political  movement,  too,  it  often  seems ;  and 
rightly,  for  never  in  the  course  of  English  history  have  native 
Englishmen  so  striven  to  alter  the  form  and  the  course  of 
constitutional  development.  In  such  a  study  as  ours  it  has 
both  aspects ;  the  dominance  of  Puritanism  may  best  be  thought 
of  as  the  period  when  for  a  little  while  the  moral  and  religious 
ideals  which  underlie  our  language  were  uppermost,  when  for 
once  the  actuating  impulse  of  authority  was  rather  that  the 
will  of  God  should  be  done  on  earth  than  that  any  custom  — 
however  fortified  and  confirmed  by  the  experience  formulated  in 
the  Common  Law  —  should  for  its  own  sake  be  maintained. 

That  the  will  of  God  should  be  done,  on  earth  as  it  is  in 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  15 

Heaven,  no  good  Englishman  will  ever  deny.  What  the 
will  of  God  is,  on  the  other  hand,  when  directly  concerned 
with  the  matters  of  this  world,  even  good  Englishmen  cannot 
always  agree.  Among  the  Puritans  themselves  there  was 
plenty  of  dissension,  but  one  thing  seems  fairly  sure,  —  no 
good  Puritan  questioned  the  truth  of  Calvinism  any  more  than 
good  Catholics  of  to-day  question  the  dogmas  of  an  GEcumen- 
ical  Council.  To  understand  Puritanism,  then,  in  England  and 
in  America  alike,  we  must  remind  ourselves  of  what  Calvinistic 
theology  taught. 

In  the  beginning,  the  Puritans  held,  God  created  man, 
responsible  to  Him,  with  perfect  freedom  of  will.  Adam,  in 
the  fall,  exerted  his  will  in  opposition  to  the  will  of  God ; 
thereby  Adam  and  all  his  posterity  merited  eternal  punish 
ment.  As  a  mark  of  that  punishment  they  lost  the  power  of 
exerting  their  will  in  harmony  with  the  will  of  God,  without 
losing  their  hereditary  responsibility  to  Him.  But  God,  in 
His  infinite  mercy,  was  pleased  to  mitigate  His  justice. 
Through  the  mediation  of  Christ,  certain  human  beings, 
chosen  at  God's  pleasure,  might  be  relieved  of  the  just 
penalty  of  sin,  and  received  into  everlasting  salvation.  These 
were  the  elect ;  none  others  could  be  saved,  nor  could  any 
acts  of  the  elect  impair  their  salvation.  Now,  there  were  no 
outward  and  visible  marks  by  which  the  elect  might  be 
known ;  there  was  a  fair  chance  that  any  human  being  to 
whom  the  gospel  was  brought  might  be  of  the  number.  The 
thing  which  most  vitally  concerned  every  man,  then,  was  to 
discover  whether  he  were  elect,  and  so  free  from  the  just 
penalty  of  sin,  ancestral  and  personal.  The  test  of  election 
was  ability  to  exert  the  will  in  true  harmony  with  the  will  of 
God,  —  a  proof  of  emancipation  from  the  hereditary  curse  of 
the  children  of  Adam ;  whoever  could  do  right,  and  wish  to, 
had  a  fair  ground  for  hope  that  he  should  be  saved.  But 
even  the  elect  were  infected  with  the  hereditary  sin  or 
humanity ;  and,  besides,  no  wile  of  the  Devil  was  more 


1 6  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

frequent  than  that  which  deceived  men  into  believing  them 
selves  regenerate  when  in  truth  they  were  not.  The  task  of 
assuring  one's  self  of  election  could  end  only  with  life,  —  a 
life  of  passionate  aspirations,  ecstatic  enthusiasms,  profound 
discouragements.  Above  all,  men  must  never  forget  that  the 
true  will  of  God  was  revealed,  directly  or  by  implication, 
only  and  wholly  in  Scripture ;  incessant  study  of  Scripture 
was  the  sole  means  by  which  any  man  could  assure  himself 
that  his  will  was  really  exerting  itself,  through  the  mediatory 
power  of  Christ,  in  true  harmony  with  the  will  of  God. 

Calvinism  this  creed  is  commonly  called,  in  memory  of  the 
French  reformer,  who  in  modern  times  has  been  its  chief  ex 
ponent  ;  but  those  learned  in  theology  tell  us  that  perhaps  we 
might  better  call  it  the  system  of  Saint  Augustine.  Augustine 
and  Calvin  alike  are  remembered  chiefly,  perhaps  wholly,  as 
theologians ;  and  in  this  age,  whose  most  characteristic  en 
ergies  are  devoted  to  researches  which  may  be  confirmed  by 
observation  or  experiment,  theology  generally  seems  intangibly 
remote  from  workaday  life.  Yet,  strangely  enough,  the  con 
ceptions  which  underlie  the  most  popular  scientific  philosophy 
of  our  own  time  have  much  in  common  with  those  which 
actuated  both  Augustine  and  Calvin.  Earthly  life,  the  mod 
ern  evolutionists  hold,  consists  in  a  struggle  for  existence 
wherein  only  the  fittest  can  survive ;  for  every  organism 
which  persists,  myriads  must  irretrievably  perish.  In  the  days 
when  Calvin  pondered  on  the  eternities,  and  still  more  in 
those  tragic  days  of  toppling  empire  when  Augustine  strove 
to  imprison  divine  truth  within  the  limits  of  earthly  language, 
science  was  still  to  come.  But  what  Augustine  and  Calvin 
saw,  in  the  human  affairs  whence  each  alike  inferred  the  sys 
tems  of  Heaven  and  Hell,  was  really  what  the  modern  evo 
lutionists  perceive  in  every  aspect  of  Nature.  Total  depravity 
is  only  a  theological  name  for  that  phase  of  life  which  in  less 
imaginative  times  we  name  the  struggle  for  existence ;  and 
likewise  election  is  only  a  theological  name  for  what  our 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  17 

newer  fashion  calls  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  Old-world 
theology  and  modern  science  alike  strive  to  explain  facts 
which  have  been  and  shall  be  so  long  as  humanity  casts  its 
shadow  in  the  sunshine. 

Now,  any  struggle  is  bound  to  be  at  its  fiercest  where  the 
struggling  forces  are  most  concentrated.  In  human  affairs, 
both  good  and  evil  struggle  hardest  where  human  beings  are 
most  densely  congregated.  Augustine  wrote  amid  the  dying 
throes  of  antiquity,  in  a  world  still  formally  dominated  by 
that  imperial  power  of  Rome  whose  true  health  and  strength 
were  gone,  Calvin  wrote  in  the  populous  Europe  of  the 
Renaissance,  where  at  once  the  whole  system  of  mediaeval  life 
was  doomed,  and  the  pitiless  pressure  of  economic  fact  was 
already  forcing  the  more  adventurous  spirits  of  every  European 
race  to  seek  an  outlet  for  their  energy  in  the  unexplored  con 
tinents  of  our  Western  Hemisphere.  Noble,  too,  though  we 
may  find  the  traditions  of  that  merry  old  England,  which  was  so 
vital  under  Queen  Elizabeth,  which  faded  under  the  first  two 
Stuarts,  and  which  vanished  in  the  smoke  of  the  Civil  Wars, 
the  plain  records,  both  of  history  and  of  literature,  show  it  to 
have  been  a  dense,  wicked  old  world,  whose  passions  ran  high 
and  deep,  and  whose  vices  and  crimes,  big  as  its  brave  old 
virtues,  were  truly  such  as  to  make  the  grim  dogmas  of  the 
Puritans  seem  to  many  earnest  minds  the  only  explanation  of 
so  godless  a  fact  as  human  life. 

God's  will  be  done  on  earth,  then,  the  Puritans  cried, 
honestly  conceiving  this  divine  will  to  demand  the  political 
dominance  of  God's  elect.  The  society  over  which  they 
believed  that  these  elect  should  make  themselves  politically 
dominant  had  all  the  complexity  which  must  develop  itself  dur 
ing  centuries  of  national  and  social  growth ;  and  this  growth, 
fortified  by  the  uncodified,  unwritten,  impregnable  Common 
Law  of  England,  had  taken  through  the  centuries  an  earthly 
course  at  variance  with  what  the  Puritans  held  to  be  their 
divinely  sanctioned  politics.  Towards  the  end  of  Cromwell's 


1 8  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

dominance,  then,  they  tried  to  mend  matters  by  giving  Eng 
land  a  written  constitution.1  In  many  respects  this  Instrument 
of  Government  seems  theoretically  better  than  the  older  system 
which  had  grown  under  the  unwritten  Common  Law,  and 
which  since  Cromwell's  time  has  developed  after  its  own 
fashion  into  the  Parliamentary  government  now  controlling  the 
British  Empire.  The  Instrument  of  Government,  however, 
had  a  mortal  weakness :  it  was  not  historically  continuous 
with  the  past ;  and  this  was  enough  to  prevent  any  historical 
continuity  with  the  future.  The  struggle  for  political  existence 
in  England  was  inevitably  fatal  to  principles  and  ideals  so  little 
rooted  in  national  life  as  those  which  the  Puritans  in  their  wise 
folly  hopefully,  yet  hopelessly  formulated.  So  in  England,  after 
the  momentary  irruption  of  dominant  Puritanism,  the  old 
Common  Law  surged  back ;  and  it  has  flowed  on  to  the 
present  day,  the  stronger  if  not  the  nobler  of  the  two  forces 
which  the  history  of  our  native  language  compels  us  to  admit 
as  the  ideals  of  our  race. 

By  most  constitutional  lawyers,  then,  the  dominance  of 
Puritanism  personified  in  Cromwell  has  been  held  an  acci 
dental  and  almost  unimportant  disease  which  may  be  neglected 
in  considering  the  life  history  of  the  English  Constitution. 
How  far  this  view  is  right,  we  need  not  trouble  ourselves  to 
inquire;  constitutional  history  is  not  within  our  province. 
What  more  concerns  us  is  a  fact  which  general  readers  of 
the  social  history  of  England  during  the  seventeenth  century 
can  hardly  fail  to  remark,  perhaps  more  certainly  than  thorough 
students  whose  attention  is  rightly,  but  often  bewilderingly, 
encumbered  by  detail.  The  records  which  remain  to  us  of 
Elizabethan  England,  and  of  the  England  which  finally  broke 
into  civil  war,  seem  records  of  a  remote  past.  Take,  for  exam 
ple,  almost  at  random,  three  names  :  those  of  the  adventurer, 
Ralegh  ;  of  the  soldier  and  courtier,  Essex  ;  and,  a  little  later, 

1  The  line  of  thought  here  set  forth  was  suggested  by  one  of  Mr.  A.  V, 
Dicey's  Lowell  Institute  lectures,  in  the  autumn  ot  1898. 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  19 

of  that  most  chivalrous  of  autobiographers,  Lord  Herbert  of 
Cherbury.  All  three  are  marked  by  a  big,  simple,  youthful 
spontaneity,  different  at  once  from  any  general  trait  of  modern 
times  and  from  those  which  are  common  to  every  period  of 
history.  Take,  equally  at  random,  three  other  names  which 
belong  to  the  years  after  Cromwell's  dominant  Puritanism  had 
failed;  Monk,  the  first  Duke  of  Albemarle;  Samuel  Pepys, 
the  diarist;  and  John  Churchill,  first  Duke  of  Marlborough. 
Though  this  last  little  group  seem  by  no  means  contemporary 
with  ourselves,  yet,  in  comparison  with  the  elder  group,  they 
seem  almost  modern,  —  old-fashioned  men  rather  than  men  of 
an  earlier  type  than  those  we  live  with.  The  contrast  is  deeply 
typical.  The  England  which  came  before  the  dominant  Puri 
tanism  of  Cromwell,  the  England  to  which  we  may  broadly 
give,  as  we  often  give  to  its  literature,  the  name  "  Elizabethan," 
vanished  when  Puritan  dominance  broke  for  a  while  the  pro 
gress  of  English  constitutional  law ;  the  England  which  came 
afterwards,  whatever  its  merits  or  its  faults,  lacked,  as  England 
has  continued  to  lack  ever  since  King  Charles  II.  was  re 
stored,  certain  traits  which  we  all  feel  in  the  old  Elizabethan 
world. 

For  our  purpose  there  is  hardly  anything  more  important 
than  to  realise,  if  we  can,  what  these  Elizabethan  traits  were, 
which  distinguish  the  England  before  Cromwell's  time  from 
that  which  has  come  after  him.  Perhaps  we  shall  have 
done  a  little  to  remind  ourselves  of  what  Elizabethan  England 
possessed,  when  we  say  that  in  the  older  time  we  can  every 
where  find  three  characteristics  which  in  the  later  time  are 
more  and  more  dimly  discernible,  —  spontaneity,  enthusiasm, 
and  versatility. 


II 

ENGLISH  LITERATURE  FROM  l6oO  TO  I/OO 

THE  social  history  of  seventeenth-century  England  broadly 
groups  itself  in  three  parts  :  that  which  preceded  the  dominant 
Puritanism  of  the  Commonwealth ;  the  dominant  Puritanism 
itself;  and  what  came  after.  All  three  of  these  phases  of 
English  life  found  adequate  expression  in  lasting  literature. 
An  easy  way  to  remind  ourselves  of  these  literary  types  is 
to  glance  at  some  records  of  publication  in  England  during 
the  three  distinct  periods  of  the  seventeenth  century.1  Between 
1600  and  1605  appeared  plays  by  Dekker,  Ben  Jonson,  John 
Lyly,  Shakspere,  Marston,  Middleton,  Heywood,  and  Chap 
man  ;  Fairfax's  translation  of  Tasso,  Lodge's  of  Josephus,  and 
Florio's  of  Montaigne ;  "  England's  Helicon,"  Campion's 
u  Art  of  English  Poetry,"  and  Davidson's  "  Poetical  Rhap 
sody  ; "  and,  among  many  other  lesser  works,  the  last  volume 
of  Hakluyt's  "Voyages."  Between  1648  and  1652  appeared 
works  by  Fuller,  Herrick,  Lovelace,  Milton,  Francis  Quarles, 
Jeremy  Taylor,  Baxter,  Bunyan,  Cowley,  Hobbes,  Vaughan, 
Davenant,  Izaak  Walton,  and  George  Herbert.  Finally,  be 
tween  1695  and  1700  appeared  plays  by  Colley  Gibber, 
Southern,  Congreve,  Farquhar,  and  Vanbrugh ;  and  works 
of  one  sort  or  another  by  Bentley,  Blackmore,  Defoe,  Evelyn, 
Garth,  Lord  Shaftesbury,  and  Dryden ;  not  to  speak  of  Tate 
and  Brady's  version  of  the  "  Psalms."  These  random  lists  will 

1  Throughout  our  study,  the  names  recorded  in  Ryland's  "  Chronologi 
cal  Outlines  of  English  Literature,"  published  by  Macmillan,  should  suffice 
for  such  purposes  as  that  now  in  mind.  Though  sometimes  slightly  inac 
curate,  this  admirably  useful  book  is  always  trustworthy  enough  to  warrant 
generalisation. 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  21 

define,  almost  as  clearly  as  lists  made  with  thoughtful  care,  the 
chief  facts  which  we  should  now  keep  in  mind. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  century,  even  though  Elizabeth's 
reign  was  very  near  its  end,  the  literature  which  we  call  Eliza 
bethan  was  at  its  height ;  and  as  the  generations  have  passed, 
we  begin  to  see  how  surely  its  central  figure,  the  dominant 
figure  of  all  English  literature,  is  that  of  Shakspere.  In  the 
middle  of  the  century  there  was  more  confusion ;  yet  it  takes 
no  great  knowledge  of  English  letters  to  feel  in  the  first  place 
that  the  Elizabethan  temper  was  no  longer  strong ;  and  in  the 
second  place,  that  among  the  men  who  were  then  writing, 
there  was  one  who  —  if  not  so  surely  central  — rose  almost  as 
superior  to  the  rest  as  Shakspere  was  fifty  years  before.  That 
man,  of  course,  is  Milton.  In  the  last  five  years  of  the  century, 
when  the  Commonwealth,  the  Restoration,  and  the  Glorious 
Revolution  had  done  their  work,  there  was  another  group,  less 
diverse  than  that  of  CromwelPs  time,  almost  as  homogeneous 
indeed  as  that  of  Elizabeth's,  but  as  different  from  either  of 
the  others  as  the  periwigs  of  Marlborough  were  from  the 
jewelled  caps  of  Walter  Ralegh ;  and  in  this  last  group,  as  in 
both  the  others,  one  figure  emerged  from  the  rest.  Here  that 
figure  is  John  Dryden,  the  first  great  maker  of  heroic  couplets, 
and  the  first  masterly  writer  of  what  has  become  modern 
English  prose.  It  is  worth  our  while  to  glance  in  turn  at 
each  of  these  literary  periods, — the  periods  of  Shakspere,  of 
Milton,  and  of  Dryden. 

Elizabethan  literature,  in  which  Shakspere  declares  himself 
more  and  more  supreme,  is  at  once  the  first,  and  in  many  re 
spects  the  greatest,  of  the  schools  or  periods  of  letters  which 
have  come  to  constitute  modern  English  literature  as  a  whole. 
Marked  throughout  by  the  spontaneity,  the  enthusiasm,  and 
the  various  versatility  of  the  England  which  bred  it,  this  period 
is  clearly  marked  as  well  by  the  fact  that  it  brought  to  final 
excellence  two  kinds  of  poetry,  —  the  lyric,  and  a  little  later 
the  dramatic.  In  thinking  of  Elizabethan  literature,  thenf 


22  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

one  is  apt  to  forget  that  it  includes  noble  work  of  other  than 
poetic  sort ;  yet  no  reader  of  English  can  long  forget  that 
to  this  same  school  belongs  the  scientific  work  and  the  final 
aphorisms  of  Bacon.  It  was  during  the  first  fifteen  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  too,  that  Walter  Ralegh,  in  the 
Tower,  wrote  his  "  History  of  the  World  ;  "  and  we  have 
only  to  glance  back  at  Ryland's  summaries  of  publication  to 
see  what  masterly  translations  accompanied  the  gradual  growth 
of  that  final  masterpiece  of  translation,  the  English  Bible  of 
1 6 1 1 .  There  were  minor  phases  of  literature  meanwhile  which 
posterity  has  been  apt  to  forget ;  but  the  name  of  Hakluyt, 
the  collector  of  so  many  records  of  explorations,  is  still  fa 
miliar;  and  so  perhaps  is  that  of  Richard  Hooker,  whose 
"  Ecclesiastic  Polity  "  remains  the  chief  literary  monument  of 
religious  controversy  during  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  Poetry 
was  first,  then,  and  supreme;  but  there  was  fine,  noble, 
thoughtful  prose  in  philosophy  and  history  alike ;  and  not  less 
characteristic  of  the  time,  though  far  less  excellent  as  litera 
ture,  was  much  matter  of  contemporary  chronicle,  like  Hak- 
luyt's  "  Voyages,"  and  much  religious  controversy. 

Throughout  this  literature  there  is  one  trait  which  the 
lapse  of  three  centuries,  with  their  slow,  inevitable  changes 
of  language,  has  tended  to  obscure.  Yet  whoever  grows 
familiar  even  with  the  work  of  Shakspere  by  himself,  and 
still  more  with  that  of  his  contemporaries  as  well,  must  grow 
to  feel  it.  This  is  a  sort  of  pristine  alertness  of  mind,  evi 
dent  in  innumerable  details  of  Elizabethan  style.  One  may 
best  detect  it,  perhaps,  by  committing  to  memory  random  pas 
sages  of  Elizabethan  literature.  If  the  trait  occurred  only 
in  the  work  of  Shakspere,  one  might  deem  it  a  mere  fresh 
miracle  of  his  genius;  but  you  will  find  it  everywhere.  In 
the  thinner  plays,  for  example,  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  the 
words,  the  sentences,  the  lines,  the  cadences,  are  full  of  re 
finements  of  phrase,  subtleties  of  alliteration,  swift  glancing 
varieties  of  allusion,  flashes  alike  of  sentiment  and  of  wit, 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  23 

somehow  beyond  the  instant  perception  of  any  English-born 
modern  mind.  Yet  it  is  no  mere  juggling  with  words  to 
say  that  the  works  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  of  Shakspere, 
and  of  all  the  dramatists,  are  truly  plays ;  and  plays  are 
meant  not  for  such  serious  study  as  the  excellence  of  these 
has  compelled  from  posterity,  but  rather  to  give  such  in 
stant  emotional  pleasure  as  theatres  afford  us  to-day,  and  as 
we  have  got  best  during  the  nineteenth  century  in  Paris. 
Such  literature  as  the  Elizabethan  world  has  left  us,  in  short, 
bespeaks  a  public  whose  spontaneous  alertness  of  mind,  whose 
instant  perception  of  every  subtle  variety  of  phrase  and 
allusion,  was  more  akin  to  that  of  our  contemporary  French 
than  to  anything  which  we  are  now  accustomed  to  consider 
native  to  insular  England.  Elizabethan  literature  bears  wit 
ness  throughout  to  the  spontaneous,  enthusiastic  versatility 
which  the  English  temperament  possessed  in  the  spacious 
Elizabethan  days. 

By  the  middle  of  the  century,  after  the  convulsions  of  the 
Civil  Wars,  this  trait  had  begun  to  fade  out  of  English  letters. 
Our  brief  list  of  mid-century  publications  revealed  Milton,  not 
as  the  chief  of  a  school,  but  rather  as  the  one  great  figure  who 
subsisted  amid  a  group  of  excellently  deliberate  minor  poets 
and  elaborate  makers  of  overwrought  rhetorical  prose,  often 
splendid,  but  never  simple.  Fuller,  Taylor,  and  Walton  fairly 
typify  seventeenth-century  prose ;  to  complete  our  impression 
of  it  we  might  glance  back  at  Burton,  whose  "  Anatomy  of 
Melancholy  "  appeared  in  1621,  and  at  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
whose  "  Religio  Medici "  was  in  1650  less  than  ten  years  old. 
In  Milton's  time,  except  for  Milton  himself,  the  creative 
impulse  which  had  made  Elizabethan  literature  so  vital  had 
subsided.  The  English  imagination  seemed  checked  by  a 
variously  developed  sense  of  the  inexorable  limits  of  fact  and 
of  language.  One  term  by  which  we  may  characterise  this 
mid-century  English  literature,  to  distinguish  it  from  the 
elder,  is  the  term  "  deliberate."  Mysteriously  but  certainly 


24  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  old  spontaneity  and  versatility  of  the  Elizabethan  mind 
had  disappeared. 

Deliberate,  indeed,  is  an  epithet  which  may  help  us  to  de 
fine  the  impression  made  by  Milton  himself.  Throughout  his 
poetry,  even  of  that  earlier  period  when  in  so  many  aspects 
he  was  still  almost  Elizabethan,  one  may  often  feel  him  tend 
ing  toward  his  later  poetic  contemporaries  in  the  conscious 
carefulness  of  his  art ;  and  surely  in  the  great  epic  work  of  his 
later  years,  when  solitary  and  alone  he  strove  to  give  artistic 
expression  to  the  dominant  ideals  of  a  Puritanism  whose  earthly 
hopes  were  as  lost  as  ever  Paradise  was  to  our  erring  fathers, 
one  feels  amid  his  all  but  unequalled  power  a  colossal  de 
liberation.  In  the  prose  work  which  intervened  between  these 
two  periods  of  his  poetic  production,  there  is  incisive  swiftness 
of  thought  and  phrase,  but  on  the  whole  its  effect  is  hardly 
more  marked  by  grimly  passionate  asperity  of  temper  than  by 
an  almost  conscious  ponderousness  of  phrase.  The  literature 
of  Cromwell's  England  was  as  different  from  that  of  Elizabeth's 
as  Cromwell  was  from  Walter  Ralegh.  The  names  of  Shak- 
spere  and  Milton  tell  the  story. 

The  name  of  Dryden  is  as  different  from  that  of  Milton  as 
Milton's  is  from  Shakspere's.  Though  Dryden's  "  Astraea 
Redux  "  was  published  seven  years  before  "  Paradise  Lost," 
Dryden  died  in  1700  amid  a  literature  whose  poetry  had 
cooled  into  something  like  the  rational  form  which  deadened 
it  throughout  the  century  to  come,  and  whose  drama  had  for 
forty  years  been  revealing  fresh  phases  of  decadent  lifelessness. 
For  though  at  least  the  comedies  of  the  Restoration  and  of  the 
years  which  follow  seemed  to  contemporaries  full  of  wit  and 
vitality,  few  bodies  of  literature  in  the  world  have  proved 
more  evanescent,  and  more  corrupt,  artistically  as  well  as 
morally.  But  if  poetry  and  the  drama  were  for  the  moment 
sleeping, —  the  latter  seemingly  for  ever,  the  former  for  well- 
nigh  a  century  to  come,  —  there  were  other  phases  of  English 
thought,  if  not  of  English  feeling,  which  were  full  of  life. 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  25 

Boyle  had  done  his  work  in  chemistry  ;  Newton  had  cre 
ated  a  whole  range  of  physical  science ;  Locke  had  pro 
duced  his  epoch-making  "  Essay  on  Human  Understanding ;  " 
and,  to  go  no  further,  the  works  of  Sir  William  Temple  and 
the  critical  essays  of  Dryden  himself  had  given  English  prose 
its  most  masterly,  almost  its  final  form. 

In  literature,  just  as  in  history,  then,  we  find  that  the  seven 
teenth  century  reveals  in  England  three  distinct  epochs,  each 
different  from  the  others  and  all  together  involving  such 
changes  in  the  national  temperament  as  to  make  the  England 
of  Dryden  almost  as  foreign  to  that  of  Shakspere  as  the  tem 
per  of  King  William  III.  was  to  Queen  Elizabeth's.  Like 
Elizabethan  England,  Elizabethan  literature  seems  different 
from  anything  which  we  can  now  know  in  the  flesh.  One 
can  hardly  imagine  feeling  quite  at  home  in  the  Mermaid 
Tavern  with  Beaumont  and  Ben  Jonson  and  the  rest ;  but  in 
modern  London,  or  at  least  in  the  London  of  thirty  years  ago, 
one  might  sometimes  feel  that  a  few  steps  around  a  grimy  corner 
should  still  lead  to  some  coffee-house,  where  glorious  John 
Dryden  could  be  found  sitting  in  robust,  old-fashioned  dicta 
torship  over  the  laws  of  the  language  in  which  we  ourselves 
think  and  speak  and  feel.  For  Dryden's  England  is  not  yet 
quite  dead  and  gone.  But  dead  and  gone,  or  at  least  vanished 
from  this  earth,  in  Dryden's  time  almost  as  surely  as  in  ours, 
was  the  elder  England,  whose  spontaneity,  whose  enthusiasm, 
and  whose  versatility  made  Elizabethan  literature  the  most 
lastingly  vital  record  which  our  language  shall  ever  phrase. 

History  and  literature  alike,  then,  have  shown  us  an  Eng 
land  of  the  seventeenth  century  wherein  the  great  central  con 
vulsion  of  dominant  Puritanism  fatally  destroyed  a  youthful 
world,  and  gave  us  at  last  in  its  place  a  more  deliberate,  per 
manently  different  new  one. 


Ill 

AMERICAN    HISTORY    FROM    l6oO    TO    IJOO 

IT  was  in  the  first  quarter  of  this  seventeenth  century  that 
the  American  colonies  were  finally  established.  The  first  last 
ing  settlement  of  Virginia  was  made  in  the  spring  of  1607; 
the  Pilgrims  landed  at  Plymouth  towards  the  end  of  1620; 
Boston  was  founded  less  than  ten  years  later;  and  from  1636 
dates  the  oldest  of  native  American  corporations,  that  of 
Harvard  College.  At  the  latest  of  these  dates  the  tragic  reign 
of  Charles  I.  had  not  half  finished  its  course  j  at  the  earliest 
Queen  Elizabeth  had  lain  less  than  five  years  in  Westminster 
Abbey  ;  and  these  dates  are  less  than  a  full  generation  apart. 

From  these  familiar  facts  may  instantly  be  inferred  another 
which  has  been  comparatively  neglected.  To  speak  only  of 
New  England, —  for  in  literary  history  New  England  is  far  more 
important  than  the  other  colonies,  —  we  may  say  that  every 
leading  man  among  the  first  settlers  both  of  Plymouth  and  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  was  born  under  Queen  Elizabeth  herself. 
William  Bradford  of  Plymouth,  for  example,  was  born  in 
1590,  the  year  when  Spenser  published  the  first  books  of  the 
"Faerie  Queene;"  and  Edward  Winslow  was  born  in  1595, 
when  Shakspere  had  published  only  u  Venus  and  Adonis " 
and  "  Lucrece."  Thomas  Dudley  is  said  to  have  been  born 
in  1576,  some  ten  years  before  the  execution  of  Mary  Stuart. 
John  Winthrop  was  born  in  1588,  the  year  of  the  Invincible 
Armada.  John  Cotton  was  born  in  1585,  the  year  before 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  killed,  when  for  aught  we  know  Shak 
spere  had  not  yet  emerged  from  Stratford,  and  when  surely 
John  Foxe,  the  martyrologist,  was  still  alive.  Thomas  Hooker 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  27 

was  born  only  a  year  later,  in  1586.  Richard  Mather  was 
only  ten  years  younger,  born  in  the  year  when  Ben  Jonson's 
first  play  is  said  to  have  been  acted,  when  Ralegh  published 
his  "  Discovery  of  Guiana,"  and  Spenser  the  last  three  books 
of  his  "  Faerie  Queene."  Roger  Williams  was  born  in  1600, 
the  year  which  gave  us  the  first  quartos  of  "  Henry  IV.," 
"Henry  V.,"  "The  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  "The 
Merchant  of  Venice,"  and  "Much  Ado  About  Nothing." 
And  what  is  thus  shown  true  of  New  England  is  truer  still 
of  Virginia,  founded  half  a  generation  earlier.  Though  the 
sovereigns  to  whom  both  northern  and  southern  colonies  owed 
their  first  allegiance  were  Stuarts,  all  the  founders  of  these  , 
colonies  were  of  true  Elizabethan  birth. 

They  were  not,  to  be  ITiFe,  quite~the  kind  of  Elizabethans 
who  expressed  themselves  in  poetry.  The  single  work  pro 
duced  in  America  which  by  any  stretch  of  language  may  be 
held  a  contribution  to  Elizabethan  letters  is  a  portion  of 
George  Sandys's  translation  of  Ovid,  said  to  have  been  made 
during  his  sojourn  in  Virginia  between  1621  and  1624.  In 
general,  the  settlers  of  Virginia  were  of  the  adventurous  type 
which  expresses  itself  far  more  in  action  than  in  words  ;  while 
the  settlers  of  New  England  were  too  much  devoted  to  the 
affairs  of  another  world  than  this  to  have  time,  even  if  they 
had  had  taste  or  principle,  for  devotion  to  any  form  of  fine 
art.  Of  Elizabethan  times,  all  the  while,  as  of  any  period 
in  history,  it  remains  true  that  in  a  deep  sense  the  men  of  a 
single  generation  cannot  help  being  brethren.  For  all  their 
mutual  detestation,  Puritans  and  playwrights  alike  possessed 
the  spontaneity  of  temper,  the  enthusiasm  of  purpose,  and  the 
versatility  of  power  which  marked  Elizabethan  England. 

Broadly  speaking,  all  our  northern  colonies  developed  from 
those  planted  in  Massachusetts,  and  all  our  southern  from  that 
planted  in  Virginia.  Questionable  though  this  statement 
may  seem  to  those  who  consider  merely  or  chiefly  the  legal 
and  political  aspects  of  history,  it  is  socially  true  to  an  ex- 


28  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

traordinary  degree.  The  type  of  character  which  planted 
itself  first  on  the  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay  displayed  from 
the  beginning  a  marked  power  of  assimilating  whatever  came 
within  its  influence.  This  trait,  akin  to  that  which  centuries 
before  had  made  the  conquered  English  slowly  but  surely  as 
similate  their  Norman  conquerors,  the  Yankees  of  our  own  day 
have  not  quite  lost.  An  equal  power  of  assimilation  marked 
the  less  austere  type  of  character  which  first  planted  itself  on 
the  James  River.  Vague  and  commonplace  as  this  statement 
may  seem,  it  is  really  important.  In  modern  America  no  fact 
is  more  noteworthy  than  that,  for  all  the  floods  of  immigra 
tion  which  have  seemed  to  threaten  almost  every  political 
and  social  landmark,  our  native  type  still  absorbs  the  foreign. 
The  children  of  immigrants  insensibly  become  natives.  The 
irresistible  power  of  a  common  language  and  of  the  common 
ideals  which  underlie  it  still  dominates.  This  tendency  de 
clared  itself  almost  from  the  moments  when  Jamestown  and 
Plymouth  were  settled.  North  and  South  alike,  then,  may 
broadly  be  regarded  as  regions  finally  settled  by  native  Eliza 
bethan  Englishmen,  whose  ardent  traits  proved  strong  enough 
to  impress  themselves  on  posterity  and  to  resist  the  immigrant 
influences  of  other  traditions  than  their  own. 

Were  our  study  of  American  history  general,  it  would  be 
our  business  to  consider  the  southern  and  central  colonies 
quite  as  much  as  those  of  New  England;  but  in  literary 
history  New  England  is  so  predominant  that,  at  least  for  the 
moment,  we  may  neglect  the  other  portions  of  the  country. 
Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay  were  both  settled  by  devout 
Calvinists,  slightly  different  perhaps  in  some  matter  of  religious 
discipline,  certainly  different  at  first  in  their  theoretical  relation 
to  the  ancestral  Church  of  England,  but  still  so  much  alike 
that  it  is  hardly  by  misuse  of  language  that  both  are  now  gen 
erally  called  Puritan.  Both  colonies  were  governed  from  the 
beginning  by  written  charters,  things  which,  except  for  Crom 
well's  Instrument  of  Government,  remain  foreign  to  the  politi- 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  29 

cal  experience  of  native  Englishmen,  and  which,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  pretty  clearly  the  prototypes  of  those  written  consti 
tutions  under  which  the  United  States  have  grown  and  pros 
pered.  In  both  colonies,  too,  the  ideals  of  dominant  Puritanism 
prevailed  from  the  beginning,  more  than  half  a  generation  be 
fore  Cromwell  dominated  English  history.  In  England,  domi 
nant  Puritanism  was  transitory,  —  breaking  into  the  course  of 
English  constitutional  history  amid  the  convulsion  of  the  Civil 
Wars,  and  fatally  unable  to  maintain  itself  among  the  complexi 
ties  and  traditions  which  compose  the  historical  continuity  of 
the  old  world.  In  New  England,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
was  no  historical  continuity,  no  tradition,  no  political  and 
social  complexity,  to  check  its  growth.  In  England  the  Civil 
Wars  came  ;  then  the  Commonwealth  j  then  the  Restoration. 
In  the  history  of  New  England  we  can  find  no  epoch-making 
facts  to  correspond  with  these.  There  was  change  of  sover 
eignty,  of  course;  there  were  heart-burnings  and  doubts  and 
fears  enough,  and  to  spare  ;  but  there  was  no  irruption  of 
political  ideals  strange  to  the  founders  of  our  American  Com 
monwealth,  nor  was  there  any  essential  change  of  dominant 
ideals  until  the  seventeenth  century  was  over.  What  might 
have  happened  except  for  the  Revolution  of  1688,  no  one  can 
say  ;  but  that  revolution  substantially  confirmed  the  traditions 
of  the  New  England  fathers. 

Throughout  the  seventeenth  century  meanwhile  a  fact  had 
been  developing  itself  on  the  American  continent  which  was 
perhaps  more  significant  to  the  future  of  New  England  than 
any  in  the  history  of  the  mother  country.  Before  1610  the 
French  had  finally  established  themselves  in  the  regions  now 
known  as  Nova  Scotia,  and  from  that  time  forth  the  French 
power  was  steadily  extending  itself  to  the  northward  and 
westward  of  the  English  colonies.  The  works  of  Francis 
Parkman,  in  which  the  history  of  the  French  power  in 
America  is  finally  dealt  with,  have  sometimes  been  deemed 
little  more  than  records  of  picturesque  adventure  and  border 


30  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

warfare,  hardly  deserving  the  lifelong  devotion  of  our  most 
powerful  historian.  In  point  of  fact,  however,  the  matters 
which  they  so  vividly  record  are  perhaps  the  most  decisive 
which  have  yet  occurred  on  the  American  continent.  The 
French  domination  of  Canada  and  of  the  West  meant  the 
planting  and  the  growth  there  of  a  language,  with  all  the 
moral  and  political  ideals  which  language  so  fatally  involves, 
utterly  foreign  to  those  English  ideals  which  have  finally  come 
to  characterise  our  people.  It  is  hard  to  generalise  rationally ; 
but  perhaps  we  may  suggestively  say  that  in  a  single  word 
the  ideal  for  which  the  French  power  stood  in  religion  and 
in  politics  alike  was  the  ideal  of  authority,  —  of  a  centralised 
earthly  power  which,  so  far  as  it  reached,  should  absolutely 
control  human  thought  and  conduct. 

Divine  authority,  of  course,  New  England  always  recog 
nised  ;  but  this  it  found  expressed  not  in  a  traditionally 
established  hierarchy,  but  in  the  written  words  of  an  inspired 
Bible  which  all  men  might  read  for  themselves.  Temporal 
authority,  too,  New  England  recognised ;  but  temporal  author 
ity  secured  and  limited  by  written  charters,  nor  yet  so  absolute 
that  for  a  moment  it  could  be  suffered  unopposed  to  violate 
the  traditional  liberties  of  England.  In  a  way,  then,  the  con 
flict  between  France  and  England  in  the  New  World,  a  con 
flict  which  came  to  fierce  fighting  only  in  the  very  last  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  was  really  a  conflict  between  the 
Civil  and  Canon  Law  and  the  Law  of  England,  between 
vestiges  of  the  antique  empire  of  Rome  and  the  beginnings 
of  that  newer  empire  of  the  English  language  which  chiefly 
among  modern  systems  now  seems  to  promise  something  like 
Roman  extension  and  permanence.  It  was  not  until  well 
into  the  eighteenth  century,  however,  that  France  and  Eng 
land,  imperial  Rome  and  the  Common  Law,  came  to  their 
death-grapple  in  America.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  or  at 
least  until  the  last  ten  years  of  it,  there  was  little  more  war 
fare  in  New  England  than  was  caused  by  the  inevitable 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  31 

struggles  of  the  native  Indians  to  maintain  their  existence  in 
the  presence  of  the  invading  race  which  has  long  ago  swept 
them  away. 

The  history  of  seventeenth-century  New  England,  in  brief, 
is  that  of  a  dominant  Puritanism,  twenty  years  older  than 
Cromwell's  and  surviving  his  by  forty  years  more.  Amid 
the  expanding  life  of  a  still  unexplored  continent,  Puritanism 
was  disturbed  by  no  such  environment  as  impeded  it  in  Eng 
land  and  fatally  checked  it  so  soon.  Rather,  the  only  external 
fact  which  affected  New  England  Puritanism  at  all,  was  one 
which  strengthened  it,  —  the  threatening  growth  near  by  of 
a  system  as  foreign  to  every  phase  of  English  thought  as  it 
was  to  Puritanism  itself. 

From  this  state  of  affairs  resulted  a  general  state  of  social 
character  which  may  best  be  understood  by  comparing  the 
historical  records  of  New  England  during  the  hundred  years 
now  in  question.  The  earliest  history  of  Plymouth  is  that  of 
Governor  Bradford,  sometimes  so  blunderingly  called  the  "  Log 
of  the  '  Mayflower; ' :"  and  the  earliest  history  of  Massachu 
setts  is  that  of  Governor  Winthrop.  Winthrop,  born  in  1588, 
died  in  1649;  an(^  Bradford,  born  in  1590,  died  in  1657. 
Both  were  born  under  Queen  Elizabeth ;  both  emigrated  be 
fore  English  Puritanism  was  dominant ;  and  neither  survived 
to  see  the  Restoration.  The  state  of  life  and  feeling  which 
they  record,  then,  must  clearly  belong  to  the  first  period  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  —  the  period  when  mature  men  were  still 
of  Elizabethan  birth.  In  1652,  three  years  after  Winthrop 
died  and  five  years  before  the  death  of  Bradford,  Samuel  Sewall 
was  born  in  England.  In  1661,  four  years  after  Bradford's 
death,  he  was  brought  to  Massachusetts,  where  he  lived  all 
his  life,  becoming  Chief  Justice  of  the  Superior  Court.  From 
1674  to  1729  he  kept  a  diary,  which  has  been  published  by  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  He  died  in  1730.  SewalPs 
life,  then,  mostly  passed  in  Massachusetts,  was  contemporary 
with  the  English  literature  between  Walton's  "Complete 


32  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Angler"  and  Pope's  "Dunciad."  Both  Winthrop  and  Brad 
ford,  on  the  other  hand,  were  born  before  Shakspere  was 
certainly  known  as  a  popular  playwright.  Yet  a  hasty  com 
parison  of  Bradford's  writing  or  Winthrop's  with  SewalFs  will 
show  so  many  more  points  of  resemblance  than  of  difference, 
both  in  actual  circumstance  and  in  general  mood,  that  it  is 
hard  to  realise  how  when  Sewall  began  his  memoranda  —  not 
to  speak  of  when  he  finished  them  —  the  generation  to  which 
Winthrop  and  Bradford  belonged  was  almost  extinct.  The 
three  books  impress  one  as  virtually  contemporary. 

How  different  this  social  pause  was  from  the  social  progress 
of  seventeenth-century  England  may  be  felt  by  similarly  com 
paring  two  familiar  English  records  of  the  period.  Lord 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  born  in  1582  and  dead  in  1648,  was 
almost  exactly  contemporary  with  Winthrop;  his  autobi 
ography,  written  in  his  last  years,  is  among  the  most  charac 
teristic  records  of  social  temper  in  our  language.  Fifteen 
years  before  Lord  Herbert's  death,  and  ten  before  he  began 
his  autobiography,  Samuel  Pepys  was  born,  whose  celebrated 
diary  runs  from  1660  to  1669.  Pepys  stopped  writing  five 
years  before  Sewall  began,  and  so  far  as  age  goes  he  might 
personally  have  known  Lord  Herbert.  Yet  the  whole  temper 
of  Herbert  is  so  remote  from  that  of  Pepys  as  to  make  their 
writing  seem  of  distinctly  different  epochs;  the  fact  that  their 
lives  overlapped  seems  half  incredible. 

Almost  any  similar  comparison  you  choose  will  tell  the 
\  same  story.  Compare,  for  example,  your  impressions  of  Es 
sex  and  of  Ralegh  with  those  of  Monk  and  of  Marlborough ; 
compare  Bacon  with  Newton,  and  Elizabeth  with  William 
III.  Then  hastily  name  to  yourself  some  of  the  worthies 
who  are  remembered  from  seventeenth-century  America. 
Bradford  and  Winthrop,  we  have  named  already  ;  Winslow 
and  Dudley,  too.  Add  to  them  Standish,  Endicott,  Roger 
Williams,  and  John  Eliot,  the  apostle  to  the  Indians ;  John 
Cotton  and  Richard  Mather ;  Increase  Mather,  son  of  the 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  33 

one  and  son-in-law  of  the  other;  Cotton  Mather,  who  com 
bined  the  blood  of  the  two  immigrant  ministers ;  Sir  William 
Phips ;  and  Sewall,  who  with  Stoughton  and  the  rest  sat  in 
judgment  on  Salem  witchcraft.  You  can  hardly  help  admitting 
that,  though  the  type  of  character  in  America  could  not  re 
main  quite  stationary,  the  change  there  between  the  earlier 
years  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  its  close  was  surpris 
ingly  less  marked  than  was  the  change  in  England.  A  little 
thought  will  speedily  show  what  this  means.  Although  the 
type  of  character  which  planted  itself  in  New  England  during 
the  first  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  very  Puritan 
and  therefore,  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  contemporary 
English  literature,  very  eccentric,  it  was  truly  an  Elizabethan 
type.  One  conclusion  seems  clear :  the  native  Yankees  of 
1700  were  incalculably  nearer  their  Elizabethan  ancestors  than 
were  any  of  their  contemporaries  born  in  the  mother  country. 
In  this  fact,  —  a  fact  rarely  emphasised,  but  once  perceived 
hardly  to  be  denied,  —  we  come  to  a  consideration  worth  pon 
dering.  Such  historical  convulsions  as  those  which  declared 
themselves  in  the  England  of  the  seventeenth  century  result 
from  the  struggling  complexity  of  social  and  political  forces 
in  densely  populated  regions.  Such  stagnation  of  social  evo 
lution  as  marks  the  seventeenth  century  in  New  England  is 
humanly  possible  only  under  conditions  where  the  pressure  of 
external  fact,  social,  political,  and  economic,  is  relaxed,  —  under 
conditions,  in  short,  where  the  individual  type  is  for  a  while 
stronger  than  environment.  Such  changes  as  the  course  of 
history  brought  to  seventeenth-century  England,  which  it 
found  in  the  full  vigour  of  Elizabethan  life  and  left  under  the 
constitutional  sway  of  King  William  III.,  are  changes  which 
must  result  to  individuals  jwst  as  much  as  to  nations  them 
selves  in  something  which,  for  want  of  a  more  exact  word, 
we  may  call  experience.  Such  lack  of  change  as  marks  the 
America  of  the  seventeenth  century  indicates  the  absence  of 
this.  Yet  even  in  the  America  of  the  seventeenth  century 
t  3 


34  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

a  true  nation,  the  nation  of  which  we  modern  Americans 
are  ourselves  a  part,  was  growing  towards  a  maturity  which 
in  our  time  is  beginning  to  reveal  itself.  Though  the  phrase 
seem  paradoxical,  it  is  surely  true  that  our  national  life  in  its 
beginnings  was  something  hardly  paralleled  in  other  history,  — 
a  century  of  untrammelled  national  inexperience. 


IV 

LITERATURE    IN    AMERICA    FROM     l6OQ    TO     1 700 

AN  instructive  impression  of  the  character  of  literature  in 
America  during  the  seventeenth  century  may  be  derived  from 
a  glance  at  the  titles  recorded  in  Mr.  Whitcomb's  "  Chrono 
logical  Outlines."1  Speaking  roughly,  — and  in  considerations 
like  this  minute  precision  is  of  little  importance,  —  we  may  say 
that  out  of  about  two  hundred  and  fifteen  of  these  titles  one 
hundred  and  ten  deal  with  matters  which  may  unquestionably 
be  described  as  religious,  and  that  of  these  all  but  one  name 
book's  produced  in  New  England.  The  next  most  consider 
able  class  of  writings  includes  matters  which  may  be  called  his 
torical  or  biographical,  beginning  with  "  The  True  Relation  " 
of  Captain  John  Smith, —  a  work  hardly  to  be  included  in  any 
classification  of  American  literature  which  should  not  equally 
include  M.  de  Tocqueville's  study  of  our  democracy  and  Mr. 
Bryce's  of  our  contemporary  commonwealth  ;  this  list  also  in 
cludes  such  biographies  as  those  of  Cotton  Mather,  whose  main 
purpose  was  quite  as  religious  as  it  was  biographical.  Out  of 
fifty-five  titles  thus  comprehensively  grouped,  thirty-seven  are 
of  New  England  origin ;  the  other  eighteen,  including  the  sepa 
rate  works  of  Captain  John  Smith,  come  either  from  Virginia  or 

1  Throughout  our  consideration  of  literature  in  America,  Whitcomb's 
"  Chronological  Outlines  of  American  Literature,"  also  published  by  Mac- 
millan,  will  prove  as  generally  useful  as  we  shall  find  Ryland's  "  Outlines  " 
concerning  English  literature.  For  the  history  of  literature  in  America 
during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  Professor  M.  C.  Tyler's 
books,  published  by  Putnam  of  New  York,  are  indispensable.  The  extracts 
from  the  writers  of  these  centuries  in  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  "  Library 
of  American  Literature  "  are  adequate  for  all  general  purposes. 


36  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

from  the  middle  colonies.  Twenty  of  Mr.  Whitcomb's  titles, 
including  such  things  as  "The  Freeman's  Oath,"  of  1639, 
said  to  have  been  the  first  product  of  the  press  in  the  United 
States,  may  be  called  political ;  only  three  of  these  twenty  are 
not  from  New  England.  Of  nineteen  other  titles,  including' 
almanacs  and  works  of  scientific  character,  which  may  best 
be  classified  with  miscellanies,  all  but  two  originated  in  this 
same  region.  Finally  there  are  nine  titles  to  which  the  name 
of  literature  may  properly  be  applied,  if  under  the  head  of 
literature  one  include  not  only  the  poems  of  that  tenth  Muse, 
Mrs.  Anne  Bradstreet,  but  the  "  Bay  Psalm  Book,"  and  so 
pervasively  theological  a  poem  as  Michael  Wigglesworth's 
"  Day  of  Doom,"  and  the  first  version  of  the  "  New  England 
Primer."  Of  the  nine  books  thus  recorded  only  Sandys's 
translation  of  Ovid  did  not  proceed  directly  from  New 
England. 

Though  the  precise  numbers  of  this  hasty  count  may  be 
inexact,  and  the  classification  itself  questionable,  the  main 
facts  which  the  classification  shows  can  hardly  be  denied. 
In  the  first  place,  the  intellectual  activity  of  New  England 
so  far  exceeded  that  of  any  other  part  of  the  country 
that  in  literary  history  other  regions  may  be  neglected. 
In  the  second  place,  the  intellectual  activity  of  New 
England  expressed  itself  chiefly  in  a  religious  form ;  and 
next  in  a  form  which,  if  the  term  "  history  "  include  diaries 
and  the  like,  may  broadly  be  described  as  historical.  Out  of 
two  hundred  and  fifteen  titles  all  but  forty-eight  fall  under 
one  or  the  other  of  these  heads ;  and  of  these  remaining 
forty-eight  only  nine  may  by  any  stretch  of  classification  be 
held  pure  literature.  Meanwhile  more  than  half  of  Whit- 
comb's  titles  are  incontestably  religious  in  character;  and  at 
least  the  New  England  publications  which  we  have  hastily 
classified  under  the  heads  of  history,  politics,  miscellany,  and 
even  literature  itself,  are  considerably  impregnated  with  re 
ligious  material. 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  37 

Contrasting  this  impression  with  our  hasty  summary  of 
English  literature  during  this  seventeenth  century,  —  the  cen 
tury  in  which  Englanct added  to  literature  the  names  of 
Shakspere,  of  Milton,  and  of  Dryden,  —  it  seems  at  first  as 
if  America  produced  no  literature  at  all.  Glancing  at  our 
English  summary  a  shade  more  carefully,  however,  we  may 
observe  a  brief  mention  that  in  Elizabethan  England  along 
with  supreme  poetry  there  was  also  both  lasting  prose,  like 
that  of  Hooker,  of  Bacon,  and  of  Ralegh,  and  such  minor 
prose  records  and  annals  as  are  typified  by  Hakluyt's  "  Voy 
ages,"  together  with  a  good  deal  of  now  forgotten  religious 
writing.  In  English  literature,  these  last  sorts  of  writing 
are  unimportant ;  they  were  generally  produced  not  by  men 
of  letters,  but  either  by  men  of  action  or  by  earnest,  unin 
spired  men  of  God.  Now,  the  men  who  founded  the 
colonies  of  Virginia  and  of  New  England  were  on  the  one 
hand  men  of  action,  and  on  the  other,  men  of  God.  It  is 
precisely  such  matter  as  their  Elizabethan  prototypes  left  in 
books  now  remembered  only  as  material  for  history  that  the 
fathers  of  America  produced  throughout  the  first  century  of 
our  national  inexperience. 

If  we  seek  in  New  England  for  traces  of  pure  literature 
during  the  seventeenth  century,  indeed,  we  shall  find  our 
attention  sadly  or  humorously  attracted  by  such  work  as  the 
"  Bay  Psalm  Book,"  produced  under  the  supervision  of 
Richard  Mather,  Thomas  Welde,  and  John  Eliot,  in  1640, 
the  year  which  in  England  saw  the  publication  of  Carew's 
"  Poems,"  and  of  Izaak  Walton's  "  Life  of  Donne."  An 
extract  from  the  preface  and  from  the  Nineteenth  Psalm  will 
give  a  sufficient  taste  of  its  quality  :  — 

"  If  therefore  the  verses  are  not  alwayes  so  smooth  and  elegant  as 
some  may  desire  or  expect ;  let  them  consider  that  God's  Altar  needs 
not  our  pollishings :  Ex.  20.  for  wee  have  respected  rather  a  plaine 
translation,  then  to  smooth  our  verses  with  the  sweetness  of  any 
paraphrase,  and  soe  have  attended  Conscience  rather  then  Elegance, 


38  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

fidelity  rather  than  poetry,  in  translating  the  hebrew  words  into  eng. 
lish  language,  and  Davids  poetry  into  english  meetre  ;  that  soe  we 
may  sing  in  Sion  the  Lords  songs  of  prayse  according  to  his  owne 
will;  untill  hee  take  us  from  hence,  and  wipe  away  all  our  teares,  & 
bid  us  enter  into  our  masters  ioye  to  sing  eternall  Halleluiahs." 
•  ••••••• 

"PSALME   XIX 
To  the  chief e  Musician  a  psalme  of  David 

The  heavens  doe  declare 

the  majesty  of  God  : 
also  the  firmament  shews  forth 

his  handy-work  abroad. 

2  Day  speaks  to  day,  knowledge 

night  hath  to  night  declar'd. 

3  There  neither  speach  nor  language  is, 

where  their  voyce  is  not  heard. 

4  Through  all  the  earth  their  line 

is  gone  forth,  &  unto 
the  utmost  end  of  all  the  world, 

their  speaches  reach  also  : 
A  Tabernacle  hee 

in  them  pitcht  for  the  Sun. 

5  Who  Bridegroom  like  from 's  chamber  goes 

glad  Giants-race  to  run. 

6  From  heavens  utmost  end, 

his  course  and  compassing  ; 
to  ends  of  it,  &  from  the  heat 
thereof  is  hid  nothing." 

The  King  James  version  of  the  same  psalm,  finally  phrased  not 
quite  thirty  years  before,  was  perfectly  familiar  to  the  men  who 
hammered  out  this  barbarous  imitation  of  a  metre  similarly 
used  by  Henry  VIII.'s  Earl  of  Surrey.  This  fact  should  give 
sufficient  impression  of  the  literary  spirit  which  controlled  the 
Puritan  fathers. 

Twenty-two  years  later,  in  1662,  —  the  year  when  Fuller's 
"  Worthies  "  was  published,  the  year  after  Davenant's  final 
version  of  "  The  Siege  of  Rhodes,"  and  the  year  before  the 
first  part  of  Butler's  "  Hudibras,"  Cowley's  "  Cutter  of 
Colman  Street,"  and  Dryden's  "Wild  Gallant,"  —  Michael 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA 


39 


Wigglesworth,  then  minister  of  Maiden,  published  his  "Day 
of  Doom,  or,  A  Poetical  Description  of  the  Great  and  Last 
Judgment,"  which  retained  its  popularity  in  New  England 
for  about  a  century.  Of  this  the  "  Plea  of  the  Infants,"  still 
faintly  remembered,  is  example  enough  :  — 


Reprobate  In 
fants  plead 
for  them 
selves. 

Rev.  20.  12,  15, 
compared 
with  Rom.  5. 
12.  14,  &  9.  ii, 
13- 
Ezek.  18.  2. 


"  Then  to  the  Bar,  all  they  drew  near 

Who  dy'd  in  infancy, 
And  never  had  or  good  or  bad 

effected  pers'nally. 
But  from  the  womb  unto  the  tomb 

were  straightway  carried, 
(Or  at  the  least  e'er  they  transgrest) 

who  thus  began  to  plead : 

*'  If  for  our  own  transgression, 

or  disobedience, 
We  here  did  stand  at  thy  left  hand 

just  were  the  Recompence : 
But  Adam's  guilt  our  souls  hath  spilt, 

his  fault  is  charg'd  on  us  : 
And  that  alone  hath  overthrown, 

and  utterly  undone  us. 

"  Not  we,  but  he  ate  of  the  Tree, 

whose  fruit  was  interdicted  : 
Yet  on  us  all  of  his  sad  Fall, 

the  punishment 's  inflicted. 
How  could  we  sin  that  had  not  been 

or  how  is  his  sin  our 
Without  consent  which  to  prevent, 

we  never  had  a  pow'r  ?  " 

The  plea  extends  to  several  stanzas  more ;  then  the 
Lord  takes  up  the  argument  at  great  length,  concluding  as 
follows :  — 


Am  I  alone  of  what 's  my  own, 

no  Master  or  no  Lord? 
Or  if  I  am,  how  can  you  claim 

what  I  to  some  afford  ? 
Will  you  demand  Grace  at  my  hand, 

and  challenge  what  is  mine? 
Will  you  teach  me  whom  to  set  free, 

and  thus  my  grace  confine  ? 


Mat  20.  15. 


40  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Psi.  58. 3-  "  You  sinners  are,  and  such  a  share 

GaTs.  i  a*  as  sinners  may  expect, 

Rom.  8.  29,  30,  Such  you  shall  have  ;  for  I  do  save 

Rev.  21.  »7.  none  but  my  own  Elect. 

Mat' !?.'  S.8"  Yet  to  compare  your  sin  with  their 

The  wicked  who  lived  a  longer  time, 

and  put'to  si-  I  do  confess  yours  is  much  less, 

^nce-  though  every  sin  's  a  crime. 

Rom.  3.  19,  * 

Mat.  22.  12, 

fomSdabuf  "  A  Crime  it;  is'  therefore  in  bliss 

state  of  all  you  may  not  hope  to  dwell ; 

afthe^tSd  But  unto  you  I  shall  allow 

hopeless  and  the  easiest  room  in  Hell. 

helpless  be-  __,          ,      .  T_.          , 

fore  an  im-  The  glorious  King  thus  answering, 

expSing^6'  the7  Cease  and  Plead  n°  lonSer  : 

their  final  Their  Consciences  must  needs  confess 

Rev?6?ei6, 17.  his  reasons  are  the  stronger." 

Such  work  as  this  is  more  characteristic  of  seventeenth- 
century  America  than  the  sporadic,  avowedly  literary  verse 
of  Mrs.  Anne  Bradstreet,  daughter  of  the  elder  Governor 
Dudley,  whom  Professor  Tyler  calls  the  first  professional 
poet  of  New  England.  She  died  in  1672,  —  the  year  when 
Addison  was  born,  and  the  year  which  gave  to  English  litera 
ture,  among  other  things,  Dryden's  u  Conquest  of  Grenada  " 
and  "  Marriage  a  la  Mode,"  with  his  "  Preface  of  Heroic 
Plays,"  Sir  William  Temple's  "  Observations  on  the  Nether 
lands,"  and  William  Wycherly's  "  Love  in  a  Wood."  A 
few  verses  from  her  posthumous  volume  published  in  1678, — 
the  year  which  gave  us  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  the  third 
part  of  "  Hudibras,"  Dryden's  "All  for  Love,"  Lee's  "  Mithri- 
dates,"  and  South's  "  Sermons,"  —  will  show  her  at  her  best :  — 

"  I  heard  the  merry  grasshopper  then  sing, 
The  black-clad  cricket  bear  a  second  part, 

They  kept  one  tune,  and  played  on  the  same  string, 
Seeming  to  glory  in  their  little  art. 

Shall  creatures  abject  thus  their  voices  raise? 

And  in  their  kind  resound  their  Maker's  praise: 

Whilst  I,  as  mute,  can  warble  forth  no  higher  lays. 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  41 

"When  I  behold  the  heavens  as  in  their  prime, 

And  then  the  earth  (though  old)  still  clad  in  green, 

The  stones  and  trees,  insensible  of  time, 

Nor  age  nor  wrinkle  on  their  front  are  seen; 

If  winter  come,  and  greenness  then  do  fade, 

A  Spring  returns,  and  they  more  youthful  made; 

But  man  grows  old,  lies  down,  remains  where  once  he  's  laid. 

"  By  birth  more  noble  than  those  creatures  all, 

Yet  seems  by  nature  and  by  custom  curs'd, 
No  sooner  born,  but  grief  and  care  makes  fall 

That  state  obliterate  he  had  at  first : 
Nor  youth,  nor  strength,  nor  wisdom  spring  again, 
Nor  habitations  long  their  name  retain, 
But  in  oblivion  to  the  final  day  remain. 

"  O  Time,  the  fatal  wrack  of  mortal  things, 

That  draws  oblivion's  curtains  over  kings, 
Their  sumptuous  monuments,  men  know  them  not, 

Their  names  without  a  record  are  forgot, 
Their  parts,  their  ports,  their  pomp's  all  laid  in  th'  dust, 
Nor  wit  nor  gold,  nor  buildings  'scape  time's  rust; 
But  he  whose  name  is  grav'd  in  the  white  stone 
Shall  last  and  shine  when  all  of  these  are  gone." 

Mrs.  Bradstreet's  family,  as  the  career  of  her  brother,  Gov 
ernor  Joseph  Dudley,  indicates,  kept  in  closer  touch  with 
England  than  was  common  in  America ;  and  besides  she  was 
clearly  a  person  of  what  would  nowadays  be  called  culture. 
Partly  for  these  reasons  her  work  seems  neither  individual  nor 
indigenous.  In  seventeenth-century  New  England,  indeed, 
she  stands  alone,  without  forerunners  or  followers;  and  if 
you  compare  her  poetry  with  that  of  the  old  country,  you  will 
find  it  very  like  such  then  antiquated  work  as  the  "  Nosce 
Teipsum  "  of  Sir  John  Davies,  published  in  1599,  the  year 
which  gave  us  the  final  version  of  "  Romeo  and  Juliet."  In 
its  own  day,  there  seems  little  doubt,  the  little  pure  literature 
of  seventeenth-century  New  England  was  already  archaic. 

Apart  from  this,  New  England  produced  only  annals, 
records,  and  far  more  characteristically  writings  of  the  class 


42  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

which  may  be  grouped  broadly  under  theology.  Just  as  our 
glance  at  the  history  of  seventeenth-century  America  revealed 
no  central  convulsion  like  the  Commonwealth,  dividing  an  old 
epoch  from  a  new,  so  our  glance  at  the  American  publications 
of  this  century  reveals  no  central  figure  like  Milton's  standing 
between  the  old  Elizabethan  world  which  clustered  about 
Shakspere,  and  the  new,  almost  modern,  school  of  letters 
which  gathered  about  Dryden. 

A  fact  perhaps  more  characteristic  of  seventeenth-century 
America  than  any  publication  was  the  foundation  in  1636  of 
Harvard  College,  intended  to  preserve  for  posterity  that  learned 
ministry  which  was  the  distinguishing  glory  of  the  immigrant 
Puritans.  From  the  very  beginning,  the  history  of  Harvard 
reveals  the  liberalism  which  still  distinguishes  the  college. 
Intended  as  a  conservative  force,  its  general  tendency  has  con 
stantly  proved  radical.  One  can  see  why.  The  English  tra 
ditions  of  the  ministers  who  founded  it  had  been  passionately 
Protestant ;  but,  once  secure  in  their  New  England  isolation, 
these  Puritans  would  have  erected  a  dominant  priesthood.  Their 
purpose  is  nowhere  better  stated  than  in  that  passage  of  Cotton 
Mather's  "  Magnalia  "  which  records  the  first  political  efforts  of 
his  grandfather  Cotton,  the  first  minister  of  the  First  Church  of 
Boston.  On  his  arrival,  "  he  found  the  whole  country  in  a 
perplexed  &  a  divided  state,  as  to  their  civil  constitution ; "  and 
being  requested  to  suggest  convenient  laws  "  from  the  laws 
wherewith  God  governed  his  ancient  people,"  he  recom 
mended  among  other  things  "  that  none  should  be  electors, 
nor  elected,  .  .  .  except  such  as  were  visible  subjects  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  personally  confederated  in  our  churches, 
In  these  &  many  other  ways,  he  propounded  unto  them  an 
endeavor  after  a  theocracy,  as  near  as  might  be,  to  that  which 
was  the  glory  of  Israel."  Now  the  essence  of  theocratic 
authority,  which  in  simple  English  means  the  rule  of  God 
himself,  is  that  it  is  absolute;  and  nothing  is  more  fatally 
foreign  to  Protestantism  than  the  conception  of  a  government 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  43 

which  should  needlessly  limit  individual  liberty.  Harvard  has 
always  been  Protestant  to  the  core.  Dunster,  the  first  presi 
dent,  lost  his  seat  because  he  could  not  conscientiously  free 
himself  from  Baptist  heresy  ;  to-day  the  unsectarian  religion 
of  the  college  combines  with  its  elective  system  to  prove 
Harvard  for  two  centuries  and  a  half  faithful  to  the  Protestant 
traditions  of  its  Puritan  founders. 

In  the  history  of  Harvard  College  during  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury  the  most  conspicuous  individuals  were  probably  President 
Increase  Mather  and  his  son  Cotton,  both  of  whom  wasted 
some  of  the  best  energies  of  their  passionately  active  lives  in  ' 
an  effort  to  make  our  ancestral  seat  of  learning  rather  a  treas 
ury  of  priestly  tradition  than  a  seminary  of  Protestant  enthusi 
asm.  The  younger  of  these  was  a  very  prolific  writer.  His 
first  publication  was  apparently  a  sermon  which  saw  the  light 
in  1686;  before  he  died,  on  the  I3th  of  February,  1728,  he 
had  published  more  than  four  hundred  separate  titles.  In  these 
forty-two  years  of  literary  activity,  however,  he  never  changed 
either  his  style  or  his  temper;  his  work  falls  chiefly  though 
not  wholly  under  the  two  heads  of  religion  and  history,  which 
with  him  were  so  far  from  distinct  that  it  is  often  hard  to  say 
under  which  a  given  work  or  passage  should  be  grouped. 
These  heads  are  the  same  which  we  have  seen  to  include 
most  American  writings  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Cotton 
Mather's  work,  in  short,  may  be  taken  as  typical  of  all  the 
American  publications  of  his  time.  A  little  study  of  this 
prolific  and  representative  writer  will  serve  as  well  as  more 
extended  observation  to  define  for  us  what  seventeenth- 
century  writing  in  America  really  was. 


COTTON     MATHER 

COTTON  MATHER,  born  in  Boston  on  the  I2th  of  February, 
1663,  was  the  son  of  Increase  Mather,  a  minister  already 
eminent,  and  the  grandson  of  John  Cotton  and  of  Richard 
Mather,  two  highly  distinguished  ministers  of  the  immigra 
tion.  In  1678  he  took  his  degree  at  Harvard  College.  Only 
three  years  later,  in  1681,  he  became  associated  with  his  father 
as  minister  of  the  Second  Church  in  Boston,  where  he  preached 
all  his  life. 

To  understand  both  his  personal  history  and  his  literary 
work,  we  must  never  forget  that  the  Puritan  fathers  had 
believed  New  England  charged  with  a  divine  mission  to  show 
the  world  what  human  society  might  be  when  governed  by 
constant  devotion  to  the  revealed  law  of  God.  This  is 
nowhere  better  stated  than  by  Cotton  Mather  himself  in  the 
general  introduction  to  his  u  Magnalia  "  :  — 

"  In  short,  the  First  Age  was  the  Golden  Age :  To  return  unto  77m/, 
will  make  a  Man  a  Protestant,  and  I  may  add,  a  Puritan.  'T  is 
possible,  that  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  carried  some  Thousands  of 
Reformers  into  the  Retirement  of  an  American  Desart,  on  purpose, 
that  with  an  opportunity  granted  unto  many  of  his  Faithful  Servants, 
to  enjoy  the  precious  Liberty  of  their  Ministry,  tho'  in  the  midst  of 
many  Temptations  all  their  days,  He  might  there  To  them  first,  and 
then  By  them,  give  a  Specimen  of  many  good  Things,  which  he  would 
have  His  Churches  elsewhere  aspire  and  arise  unto :  And  This  being 
done,  He  knows  not1  whether  there  be  not  All  Done,  that  Neiv  Eng 
land was  planted  for;  and  whether  the  Plantation  may  not,  soon  after 
this,  Come  to  Nothing" 

1  Mather's  rare  Errata  bid  us  "  blot  out  NOT." 


COTTON  MATHER  45 

Whatever  the  political  disturbances  of  Massachusetts  under 
the  original  charter,  the  period  between  the  foundation  of  the 
colony  and  the  revocation  of  this  charter  was  on  the  whole  one 
of  theocracy.  Toward  the  end  of  this  period  Cotton  Mather 
entered  upon  his  ministry  and  the  extreme  activity  of  his  life. 
At  that  very  moment  the  charter  was  m  danger ;  four  years  later 
it  was  revoked.  To  advocates  of  the  old  order  the  ensuing 
troubles  seemed  the  most  critical  which  New  England  had  ever 
known.  In  few  words  the  question  was  whether  under  some 
new  government  the  old  domination  of  the  ministry  should  per 
sist  or  whether  the  ministry  must  relinquish  temporal  power. 
Increase  Mather  hastened  to  England,  where  he  hoped  he 
might  do  something  toward  securing  a  restoration  of  the 
charter.  Cotton  Mather,  still  almost  a  boy,  was  left  virtually 
at  the  head  of  the  conservative  party  in  Boston,  devoting  him 
self  with  untiring  enthusiasm  both  in  public  acts  and  in  private 
devotions  to  the  maintenance  in  New  England  of  the  ancestral 
policy  of  theocracy.  In  1692  came  news  that  King  William 
had  granted  a  new  charter  which  secured  to  Massachusetts  a 
government  as  free  as  any  in  the  civilised  world,  and  that  the 
first  royal  governor  appointed  thereunder  was  Sir  William  Phips, 
a  devout,  old-fashioned  New  England  Calvinist,  and  a  member 
of  the  very  church  over  which  the  Mathers  presided. 

Cotton  Mather  believed  that  this  triumphant  answer  to  his 
prayers  demanded  on  his  part  some  peculiar  act  for  the  ser 
vice  of  God.  He  looked  about  to  see  what  service  God  most 
needed,  and  discovered  thickening  in  the  air  about  him  a 
storm  of  occultism.  Nowadays  we  call  such  things  spirit 
ualism,  or  hypnotism  ;  in  the  seventeenth  century  they  were 
called  witchcraft,  and  were  believed  to  be  literally  the  work 
of  the  Devil  himself.  Beyond  doubt  Cotton  Mather  was 
among  the  chief  leaders  of  the  attack  on  this  mysterious  evil 
which  ended  in  the  memorable  tragedy  at  Salem ;  but  pos 
terity,  which  will  never  forget  that  the  witches  were  hanged, 
has  long  forgotten  the  legal  point  on  which  their  hanging 


46  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

turned.  No  one  dreamt  of  denying  the  devilish  fact  of 
witchcraft,  —  acknowledged  by  the  law  of  the  period  as  a 
capital  crime.  The  only  doubt  was  how  it  might  legally  be 
proved.  A  question  arose  whether  what  was  called  spectral 
evidence  should  be  accepted ;  that  is,  whether  the  testimony 
of  bewitched  persons,  concerning  what  they  saw  and  felt  in 
the  paroxysms  of  their  possessions,  was  valid  against  the  ac 
cused.  Cotton  Mather's  personal  records  declare  that  he 
warned  the  court  against  the  dangers  of  spectral  evidence  in 
cases  of  life  and  death  ;  but  that  when  against  his  protest  the 
court  decided  to  accept  it,  he  felt  bound,  believing  witch 
craft  diabolical,  not  publicly  to  oppose  the  decision.  It  was 
mostly  on  spectral  evidence  that  the  witches  were  hanged ; 
when  spectral  evidence  was  rejected,  the  prosecutions  soon 
came  to  an  end.  Then  arose  that  deep  revulsion  of  feeling 
which  posterity  has  so  bitterly  cherished.  For  two  hundred 
years,  there  has  been  little  mercy  shown  the  theocratic  minis 
ters  who  devotedly  urged  on  the  prosecution  of  the  witches  ; 
and,  whatever  his  actual  responsibility,  Cotton  Mather,  the 
least  forgotten  of  these  ministers,  has  borne  the  brunt  of  all 
the  evil  which  tradition  has  fixed  on  the  period. 

The  collapse  of  the  witch  trials  in  1692  may  be  said  to 
mark  the  end  of  theocracy  in  New  England.  Nine  years 
later,  in  1701,  the  orthodox  party  in  the  church  had  another 
blow.  Increase  Mather,  after  sixteen  years'  incumbency  as 
President  of  Harvard  College,  was  finally  removed  to  be  re 
placed  by  a  divine  of  more  liberal  tendencies.  This  really 
ended  the  public  career  of  both  father  and  son.  In  the 
public  life  of  New  England,  as  in  that  of  the  mother  coun 
try,  we  may  say,  the  ideal  of  the  Common  Law  finally 
supplanted  the  biblical  ideal  of  the  Puritans,  and  at  the 
oldest  of  New  England  seminaries  the  ideal  of  Protestantism 
finally  vanquished  that  of  priesthood. 

Cotton  Mather  lived  on  until  1728,  preaching,  writing 
numberless  books,  and  doing  much  good  scientific  workj 


COTTON  MATHER  47 

among  other  things,  he  was  the  first  person  in  the  English- 
speaking  world  to  practise  inoculation  for  small-pox.  Un 
tiringly  busy,  hoping  against  hope  for  well  on  to  thirty  years, 
he  died  at  last  with  the  word  Fructuosus  on  his  lips  as  a  last 
counsel  to  his  son.  Undoubtedly  he  was  eccentric  and  fan 
tastic,  so  reactionary  in  temper  that  those  who  love  progress 
have  been  apt  to  think  him  almost  as  bad  as  he  was  queer. 
For  all  his  eccentricity,  however,  and  perhaps  on  account  of 
the  exaggeration  of  his  traits  in  general,  he  seems  on  the  whole 
the  most  complete  type  of  the  oldest-fashioned  divine  of  New 
England.  He  was  born  in  Boston,  and  educated  at  Harvard 
College ;  he  lived  in  Boston  all  his  life,  never  straying  a  hun 
dred  miles  away.  Every  external  influence  brought  to  bear 
on  him  was  local.  Whatever  else  his  life  and  work  means, 
then,  it  cannot  help  expressing  what  human  existence  taught 
the  most  intellectually  active  of  seventeenth-century  Yankees. 

Here,  of  course,  we  are  concerned  with  him  only  as  a  man  of 
letters.  His  literary  activity  was  prodigious.  Sibley's  "  Har 
vard  Graduates  "  records  some  four  hundred  titles  of  his  act 
ual  publications  ;  besides  this,  he  wrote  an  unpublished  treatise 
on  medicine  which  would  fill  a  folio  volume ;  and  his  un 
published  "  Biblia  Americana"  —  an  exhaustive  commentary 
on  the  whole  Bible  —  would  fill  two  or  three  folios  more.  He 
left  behind  him,  too,  many  sermons,  not  to  speak  of  letters 
and  of  diaries,  which  have  never  seen  print.  Until  one  actu 
ally  inspects  the  documents,  it  seems  incredible  that  in  forty- 
five  years  any  single  human  being  could  have  penned  so  many 
words  as  we  thus  see  to  have  come  from  the  hand  of  one  of 
the  busiest  ministers,  one  of  the  most  insatiable  scholars  and 
readers,  and  one  of  the  most  active  politicians  whom  America 
has  ever  known. 

To  discuss  in  detail  such  a  mass  of  work  is  out  of  the 
question  ;  but,  though  many  of  Cotton  Mather's  writings 
were  published  after  1700,  his  most  celebrated  and  consid 
erable  book,  the  "Magnalia,"  which  was  made  toward  the 


48  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

middle  of  his  life  and  which  includes  reprints  of  a  number 
of  brief  works  published  earlier,  typifies  all  he  did  as  a  man 
of  letters,  before  or  afterwards.  It  was  begun,  his  diary  tells 
us,  in  1693;  and  although  not  published  until  1702,  it  was 
virtually  finished  in  1697.  These  dates  throw  light  on  what 
the  book  really  means ;  they  come  just  between  the  end  of 
those  witchcraft  trials  which  broke  the  political  power  of  the 
clergy,  and  the  final  defeat  of  the  Mathers  in  their  endeavour 
to  retain  the  government  of  Harvard  College.  Though  Har 
vard  tradition  still  holds  this  endeavour  to  have  been  chiefly  a 
matter  of  personal  ambition,  whoever  comes  intimately  to 
know  the  Mathers  must  feel  that  to  them  the  question  seemed 
far  otherwise.  What  both  had  at  heart  was  a  passionate 
desire,  based  on  fervent,  unshaken  faith,  that  New  England 
should  remain  true  to  the  cause  of  the  fathers,  which  both 
believed  indubitably  the  cause  of  God.  In  the  years  when  the 
"  Magnalia  "  was  writing,  there  seemed  a  chance  that  if  con 
temporary  New  England  could  awaken  to  a  sense  of  what 
pristine  New  England  had  been,  all  might  still  go  well. 
Despite  the  fact  that  the  "  Magnalia  "  is  professedly  a  history, 
then,  it  may  better  be  regarded  as  a  passionate  controversial 
work.  Its  true  motive  was  to  excite  so  enthusiastic  a  sym 
pathy  with  the  ideals  of  the  Puritan  fathers  that,  whatever  fate 
might  befall  the  civil  government,  their  ancestral  seminary  of 
learning  should  remain  true  to  its  colours. 

At  the  time  when  the  "  Magnalia "  was  conceived,  the 
New  England  colonies  were  about  seventy  years  old.  Broadly 
speaking,  there  had  flourished  in  them  three  generations,  —  the 
immigrants,  their  children,  and  their  grandchildren.  The 
time  was  come,  Cotton  Mather  thought,  when  the  history 
of  these  three  generations  might  be  critically  examined;  if 
this  examination  should  result  in  showing  that  there  had 
lived  in  New  England  an  unprecedented  proportion  of  men 
and  women  and  children  whose  earthly  existence  had  given 
signs  that  they  were  among  the  elect,  then  his  book  might  go 


COTTON  MATHER  49 

far  to  prove  that  the  pristine  policy  of  New  England  had  been 
especially  favoured  of  the  Lord.  For  surely  the  Lord  would 
choose  His  elect  most  eagerly  in  places  where  life  was  con 
ducted  most  according  to  His  will. 

In  this  mood  the  "  Magnalia  "  was  written.  Its  first  sen 
tence  sounds  the  key-note  of  the  whole :  — 

"  I  write  the  Wonders  of  the  Christian  Religion,  flying  from  the 
Depravations  of  Europe,  to  the  American  Strand:  And,  assisted  by 
the  Holy  Author  of  that  Religion,  I  do,  with  all  Conscience  of  Truth, 
required  therein  by  Him,  who  is  the  Truth  it  self,  report  the  Wonder 
ful  Displays  of  His  Infinite  Power,  Wisdom,  Goodness,  and  Faithful 
ness,  wherewith  His  Divine  Providence  hath  Irradiated  an  Indian 
Wilderness." 

So  it  proceeds  through  its  hundreds  of  pages,  dwelling  most 
on  those  traits  of  New  England  which  Cotton  Mather  be 
lieved  especially  to  indicate  the  favour  of  God.  He  tells  first 
the  story  of  the  colonies,  giving  little  space  to  what  he  thinks 
the  evil  side  of  it :  — 

"  Though  I  cannot  approve  the  conduct  of  Josephus  ;  (whom  Jerom 
not  unjustly  nor  inaptly  calls  'the  Greek  Livy,')  when  he  had  left  out  of 
his  Antiquities,  the  story  of  the  Golden  Calf,  and  I  don't  wonder  to 
find  Chamier,  and  Rivet,  and  others,  taxing  him  for  his  partiality  to 
wards  his  country-men  ;  yet  I  have  left  unmentioned  some  censurable 
occurrences  in  the  story  of  our  Colonies,  as  things  no  less  unuseful 
than  improper  to  be  raised  out  of  the  grave,  wherein  Oblivion  hath 
now  buried  them;  lest  I  should  have  incurred  the  pasquil  bestowed 
upon  Pope  Urban,  who,  employing  a  committee  to  rip  up  the  old 
errors  of  his  predecessors,  one  clapped  a  pair  of  spurs  upon  the  heels 
of  the  statue  of  St.  Peter ;  and  a  label  from  the  statue  of  St.  Paul 
opposite  thereunto,  upon  the  bridge,  asked  him,  'Whither  he  was 
bound  ?  '  St.  Peter  answered,  '  I  apprehend  some  danger  in  staying 
here  ;  I  fear  they  '11  call  me  in  question  for  denying  my  Master.'  And 
St.  Paul  replied,  '  Nay  then  I  had  best  be  gone  too,  for  they  question 
me  also  for  persecuting  the  Christians  before  my  conversion.' " 

Cotton  Mather's  scale  of  values,  then,  considerably  differs 
from  that  of  a  critical  modern  historian.  In  his  general  nar 
rative,  for  example,  he  hardly  mentions  the  Antinomian  con- 

4 


50  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

troversy,  and  has  little  to  say  of  such  subsequently  famous 
personages  as  Roger  Williams  or  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  details  at  loving  length,  first  the  lives  of  those 
governors  and  magistrates  who  seemed  especial  servants  of  the 
Lord,  from  Bradford  and  Winthrop  and  Theophilus  Eaton  to 
Sir  William  Phips  ;  and  next  the  lives  and  spiritual  experiences 
of  a  great  number  of  the  immigrant  clergy  and  of  their  suc 
cessors  in  the  pulpit.  He  recounts  the  history  of  Harvard 
College  during  its  first  sixty  years ;  and  he  lays  down  with  sur 
prising  lucidity  the  orthodox  doctrine  and  discipline  of  the 
New  England  churches.  These  matters  fill  five  of  the  seven 
books  into  which  the  "  Magnalia "  is  divided.  The  last 
two  books  portray  the  reverse  of  the  picture ;  one  deals  with 
"  Remarkable  Mercies  and  Judgments  on  many  particular  per 
sons  among  the  people  of  New  England,"  and  the  other  with 
"The  Wars  of  the  Lord  —  the  Afflictive  Disturbances  which 
the  Churches  of  New  England  have  suffered  from  their  various 
adversaries ;  and  the  Wonderful  Methods  and  Mercies,  where 
by  the  Churches  have  been  delivered."  Full  of  petty  personal 
anecdote,  and  frequently  revealing  not  only  bigoted  prejudice 
but  grotesque  superstition,  these  last  two  books  have  been 
more  generally  remembered  than  the  rest.  One  commonly 
hears  the  "  Magnalia "  mentioned  in  terms  which  seem  to 
assert  these  least  admirable  parts  of  it  to  be  the  most  charac 
teristic  of  work  and  writer  alike.  Characteristic  they  are,  but 
little  more  so  than  the  Clown  in  "  Hamlet "  is  of  Shakspere ; 
no  one  but  their  author  could  have  written  them,  yet  in 
the  whole  body  of  his  work  they  are  a  minor  feature.  For 
whoever  grows  familiar  with  the  "  Magnalia  "  must  feel  that 
it  goes  far  toward  accomplishing  the  purpose  which  Cotton 
Mather  intended. 

The  prose  epic  of  New  England  Puritanism  it  has  been 
called,  setting  forth  in  heroic  mood  the  principles,  the  history, 
and  the  personal  characters  of  the  fathers.  The  principles, 
theologic  and  disciplinary  alike-  are  stated  with  clearness,  dig- 


COTTON  MATHER  51 

nity,  and  fervour.  The  history,  though  its  less  welcome  phases 
are  often  lightly  emphasised,  and  its  details  are  hampered  by 
no  deep  regard  for  minor  accuracy,  is  set  forth  with  a  sincere 
ardour  which  makes  its  temper  more  instructive  than  that  of 
many  more  trustworthy  records.  And  the  life-like  portraits 
of  the  Lord's  chosen,  though  full  of  quaintly  fantastic  phrases 
and  artless  pedantries,  are  often  drawn  with  touches  of  enthu 
siastic  beauty. 

A  few  sentences  from  his  life  of  the  apostle  Eliot,  whose 
Indian  Bible  is  remembered  as  the  first  complete  version  of 
scripture  printed  in  New  England,  will  typify  Mather's  fantas 
tic  vein :  — 

"  I  know  not  what  thoughts  it  will  produce  in  my  Reader,  when  I 
inform  him,  that  once  finding  that  the  Daemons  in  a  possessed  young 
Woman,  understood  the  Latin  and  Greek  and  Hebrew  Languages, 
my  Curiosity  led  me  to  make  Trial  of  this  Indian  language,  and  the 
Daemons  did  seem  as  if  they  did  not  understand  it.  This  tedious 
Language  our  Eliot  (the  Anagram  of  whose  name  was  Toile)  quickly 
became  a  Master  of ;  he  employ'd  a  pregnant  and  witty  Indian,  who 
also  spoke  English  well,  for  his  Assistance  in  it ;  and  compiling  some 
Discourses  by  his  Help,  he  would  single  out  a  Word,  a  Noun,  a  Verb, 
and  pursue  it  through  all  its  variations  :  Having  finished  his  Gram 
mar,  at  the  close  he  writes,  Prayers  and  Pains  thro1  Faith  in  Christ 
Jesus  will  do  any  thing  !  And  being  by  his  Prayers  and  Pains  thus 
furnished,  he  set  himself  in  the  year  1646  to  preach  the  Gospel  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  among  these  Desolate  Outcasts." 

The  last  paragraph  of  the  life  of  Theophilus  Eaton,  first 
Governor  of  New  Haven,  will  show  the  dignity  of  Mather's 
best  narrative  :  — 

"  Thus  continually  he,  for  about  a  Score  of  Years,  was  the  Glory 
and  Pillar  of  New-Haven  Colony.  He  would  often  say,  Some  count 
it  a  great  matter  to  Die  well,  but  I  am  sure  'tis  a  great  matter  to  Live 
well.  All  our  Care  should  be  while  we  have  our  Life  to  use  it  well, 
and  so  when  Death  puts  an  end  unto  that,  it  will  put  an  end  unto  all 
cur  Cares.  But  having  Excellently  managed  his  Care  to  Live  well, 
God  would  have  him  to  Die  well,  without  any  room  or  time  then 
given  to  take  any  Care  at  all;  for  he  enjoyed  a  Death  sudden  to 
everyone  but  himself!  Having  worshipped  God  with  his  Family  after 


52  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

his  usual  manner,  and  upon  some  Occasion  with  much  Solemnity 
charged  all  the  Family  to  carry  it  well  unto  their  Mistress  who  was 
now  confined  by  Sickness,  he  Supp'd,  and  then  took  a  turn  or  two 
abroad  for  his  Meditations.  After  that  he  came  in  to  bid  his  Wife 
Good-night,  before  he  left  her  with  her  Watchers;  which  when  he 
did,  she  said,  Methinks  you  look  sad!  Whereto  he  reply'd,  The  Dif 
ferences  risen  in  the  Church  of  Hartford  make  me  so;  she  then 
added,  Let  us  e^en  go  back  to  our  Native  Country  again;  to  which 
he  answered,  You  may,  (and  so  she  did)  but  I  shall  die  here.  This 
was  the  last  Word  that  ever  she  heard  him  speak;  for  now  retiring 
unto  his  Lodging  in  another  Chamber,  he  was  overheard  about  mid 
night  fetching  a  Groan  ;  and  unto  one,  sent  in  presently  to  enquire 
how  he  did,  he  answered  the  Enquiry  with  only  saying,  Very  III  ! 
And  without  saying  any  more,  he  fell  asleep  in  Jesus  :  In  the  Year 
1657  loosing  Anchor  from  New-Haven  for  the  better." 

Finally,  the  last  clause  of  a  ponderous  sentence  from  his 
life  of  Thomas  Shepard,  first  minister  of  Cambridge,  is  far 
more  characteristic  of  Mather  than  are  many  of  the  oddities 
commonly  thought  of  when  his  name  is  mentioned  :  — 

"  As  he  was  a  very  Studious  Person,  and  a  very  lively  Preacher; 
and  one  who  therefore  took  great  Pains  in  his  Preparations  for  his 
Publick  Labours,  which  Preparations  he  would  usually  finish  on 
Saturday,  by  two  a  Clock  in  the  Afternoon  ;  with  Respect  whereunto 
he  once  used  these  Words,  God  will  curse  that  Man's  Labours,  that 
lumbers  up  and  down  in  the  World  all  the  Week,  and  then  upon 
Saturday,  in  the  afternoon  goes  to  his  Study  ;  whereas  God  knows, 
that  Time  were  little  enough  to  pray  in  and  weep  in,  and  get  his  Heart 
into  a  fit  Frame  for  the  Duties  of  the  approaching  Sabbath  ;  So  the 
Character  of  his  daily  Conversation,  was  A  Trembling  Walk  with 


"  A  trembling  walk  with  God,"  —  you  shall  look  far  for  a 
nobler  phrase  than  that,  or  for  one  which  should  more  truly 
characterise  not  only  Thomas  Shepard,  but  the  better  life 
of  all  the  first  century  of  New  England.  In  old  New  Eng 
land  there  were  really  more  such  characters  as  the  Puritans 
deemed  marked  for  God's  elect  than  are  recorded  of  almost 
any  other  society  of  equal  size  and  duration  in  human  history. 
For  this  fact  we  can  account  in  modern  terms  which  would 
have  been  strangely  unwelcome  to  Cotton  Mather  and  the 


COTTON  MATHER  53 

godly  personages  whose  memories  he  has  preserved.  In  their 
New  England,  the  pressure  of  external  fact  was  politically 
and  socially  relaxed  ;  except  with  the  brute  forces  of  nature 
the  struggle  for  existence  was  less  fierce  than  in  almost 
any  other  region  now  remembered.  Individuals  could  there 
progress  from  cradle  to  grave  with  less  distortion  than  must 
always  be  worked  by  such  social  struggles  as  changed  the 
England  of  Elizabeth  through  that  of  Cromwell  into  that 
of  William  III.,  and  as  have  steadily  altered  and  developed  the 
course  of  European  history  ever  since.  Relax  the  pressure 
which  a  dense  society  brings  upon  human  life,  and  the  traits 
of  human  nature  which  will  reveal  themselves  in  a  simpler 
world  are  generally  traits  which  those  who  love  ideals  are  apt 
to  call  better.  Such  relaxation  of  pressure  blessed  pristine 
New  England  ;  the  results  thereof  the  "  Magnalia  "  records. 

These  it  records  with  an  enthusiasm  whic*  in  spite  of  the 
pedantic  queerness  of  Mather's  style,  one  grows  to  feel  more 
and  more  vital.  What  is  more,  amid  all  his  vagaries  and 
oddities,  one  feels  too  a  trait  which  even  our  few  extracts  may 
perhaps  indicate.  Again  and  again,  Cotton  Mather  writes 
with  a  rhythmical  beauty  which  recalls  the  enthusiastic  spon-li 
taneity  of  Elizabethan  English,  so  different  from  the  Eng 
lish  which  came  after  the  Civil  Wars.  And  though  the 
"  Magnalia "  hardly  reveals  the  third  characteristic  of  Eliza 
bethan  England,  no  one  can  read  the  facts  of  Cotton  Mather's 
busy,  active  life  without  feeling  that  this  man  himself,  who 
wrote  with  enthusiastic  spontaneity,  and  who  in  his  earthly 
life  was  minister,  politician,  man  of  science,  scholar,  and  con 
stant  organiser  of  innumerable  good  works,  embodied  just  that 
kind  of  restless  versatility  which  characterised  Elizabethan 
England  and  which  even  to  our  own  day  has  remained  char 
acteristic  of  New  England  Yankees. 

For  if  the  lapse  of  seventy  years  had  not  left  New  England 
unchanged,  it  had  altered  life  there  far  less  than  men  have 
supposed.  The  "  Magnalia "  was  published  two  years  after 


54  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 

Dryden  died ;  and  even  the  few  extracts  at  which  we  have 
been  able  to  glance  will  show  that  it  groups  itself  not  with 
such  work  as  Dryden's,  but  rather  with  such  earlier  work  as 
that  of  Fuller  or  even  of  Burton.  As  a  man  of  letters, 
Cotton  Mather,  who  died  in  the  reign  of  George  II.,  had 
more  in  common  with  that  generation  of  his  ancestors  which 
was  born  under  the  last  of  the  Tudors  than  with  any  later 
kind  of  native  Englishmen. 


VI 


SUMMARY 


OUR  hasty  glance  at  the  literary  history  of  America  during 
the  seventeenth  century  has  revealed  some  facts  worth  remem 
bering.  In  1630,  when  Boston  was  founded,  the  mature  in 
habitants  of  America,  like  their  brethren  in  England,  were 
native  Elizabethans.  In  1700  this  race  had  long  been  in  its 
grave.  In  densely  populated  England,  meanwhile,  historical 
pressure  —  social,  political,  and  economic  alike —  had  wrought 
such  changes  in  the  national  character  as  are  marked  by  the 
contrast  between  the  figures  of  Elizabeth  and  of  King  William 
III.  The  dominant  type  of  native  Englishmen  had  altered : 
national  experience  was  steadily  accumulating.  In  America 
there  had  been  no  such  external  pressure;  and  though  the 
immigrant  Puritans  had  long  been  no  more,  and  though  isola 
tion  was  making  the  inhabitants  of  New  England  more  and 
more  provincial,  they  had  preserved  to  an  incalculable  degree 
the  spontaneous,  enthusiastic,  versatile  character  of  their  immi 
grant  ancestors.  In  literature  seventeenth-century  England 
had  expressed  itself  in  at  least  three  great  and  distinct  moods, 
of  which  the  dominant  figures  were  Shakspere,  Milton,  and 
Dry  den.  Though  America  had  meanwhile  produced  hardly 
any  pure  letters,  it  had  continued,  long  after  Elizabethan  temper 
had  faded  from  the  native  literature  of  England,  to  keep  alive 
with  little  alteration  those  minor  phases  of  Elizabethan 
thought  and  feeling  which  had  expressed  the  temper  of  the 
ancestral  Puritans.  In  history  and  in  literature  alike,  the 
story  of  seventeenth-century  America  is  a  story  of  unique 
national  inexperience. 


BOOK  II 
THE    EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 


BOOK    II 

THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY 
1 

ENGLISH  HISTORY  FROM  IJOO  TO  l8oO 

WHEN  the  eighteenth  century  began,  the  reign  of  William  III. 
was  about  as  near  its  close  as  that  of  Elizabeth  was  a  hun 
dred  years  before.  In  1702  William  was  succeeded  by 
Queen  Anne.  In  1714  George  I.  followed  her,  founding 
the  dynasty  which  still  holds  the  throne.  George  II.  suc 
ceeded  him  in  1727;  and  in  1760  came  George  III.,  whose 
reign  extended  till  1820.  The  names  of  these  sovereigns 
instantly  suggest  certain  familiar  facts,  of  which  the  chief  is 
that  during  the  first  half  of  the  century  the  succession  re 
mained  somewhat  in  doubt.  It  was  only  in  1745,  when  the 
reign  of  George  II.  was  more  than  half  finished,  that  the  last 
fighting  with  Stuart  pretenders  occurred  on  British  soil.  On 
British  soil,  but  not  on  English  :  there  has  been  no  actual 
warfare  in  England  since  in  1685  the  battle  of  Sedgmoor  sup 
pressed  the  Duke  of  Monmouth's  rebellion  against  James  II. 
These  obvious  facts  indicate  historical  circumstances  which 
have  had  profound  effect  on  English  character. 

Continental  nations  are  now  and  again  disposed  to  call  the 
English  a  nation  of  shopkeepers;  and  certainly  during  the 
past  two  centuries  the  commercial  prosperity  of  England  has 
exceeded  that  of  most  other  countries.  An  imperative  condi 
tion  of  such  prosperity  is  peace  and  domestic  order.  Good 
business  demands  an  efficient  police,  and  in  general  a  state  of 


60  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

life  which  permits  people  to  devote  themselves  to  their  own 
affairs,  trusting  politics  to  those  whose  office  it  is  to  govern. 
Under  such  circumstances  people  have  small  delight  in  civil 
wars  and  disputed  successions.  Many  eighteenth-century  Eng 
lishmen,  no  doubt,  who  in  the  perspective  of  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  look  romantically  attractive,  thought  the  divine  right  of 
the  Stuarts  unquestionable,  and  the  Georges  usurpers ;  but  par 
liamentary  government  could  give  England  what  divine  right 
could  no  longer  give  it,  —  prosperous  public  order.  In  the 
course  of  the  eighteenth  century,  then,  there  steadily  grew  a 
body  of  public  opinion,  at  last  overwhelming,  which  with  all 
the  tenacity  of  British  unreason  maintained  the  actual  state 
of  the  constitution.  The  whole  force  of  social  and  political 
history  in  England  tended  slowly  but  surely  to  the  mainte 
nance  of  established  institutions. 

During  this  eighteenth  century  we  accordingly  find  in  Eng 
land  no  such  radical  changes  as  marked  the  preceding.  Though 
George  III.  survived  William  of  Orange  far  longer  than 
William  had  survived  Queen  Elizabeth,  we  can  feel  between 
the  Prince  of  Orange  and  his  native  English  successor  no 
such  contrast  as  we  felt  between  William  and  the  last 
Tudor  queen.  For  all  that,  the  century  was  not  stagnant; 
and  perhaps  our  simplest  way  of  estimating  its  progress  is  to 
name  four  English  battles  which  are  still  enough  remembered 
to  be  recorded  in  the  brief  historical  summaries  of  Ryland's 
"Outlines  of  English  Literature."  In  1704  was  fought  the 
battle  of  Blenheim;  in  1745,  that  of  Fontenoy ;  in  1759 
Wolfe  fell  victorious  at  Quebec;  and  in  1798  Nelson  won 
the  first  of  his  great  naval  victories  —  the  battle  of  the  Nile. 

Whatever  else  these  battles  have  in  common,  all  four  were 
fought  against  the  French,  —  the  one  continental  power  whose 
coast  is  in  sight  of  England.  Throughout  the  century,  then, 
the  English  Channel  was  apt  to  be  an  armed  frontier;  the 
geographical  isolation  of  England  was  tending  toward  that 
international  isolation  which  until  our  own  time  has  been  so 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  61 

marked.  A  second  fact  about  these  four  battles  is  almost  as 
obvious.  However  important  the  questions  at  issue,  people 
nowadays  have  generally  forgotten  what  Blenheim  and  Fonte- 
noy  were  fought  about.  Of  Blenheim,  indeed,  we  remember, 
along  with  the  great  name  of  Marlborough,  only  the  poem  by 
Southey,  where  old  Caspar,  his  work  done,  tells  little  Peter- 
kin,  who  is  rolling  about  the  skulls  just  turned  up  by  the 
ploughshare,  how  these  were  the  fruits  of  the  famous  victory ; 
and  when  Peterkin  inquires  what  the  dead  soldiers  died  for, 
all  old  Caspar  can  tell  him  is  that  Marlborough  was  there, 
and  Prince  Eugene,  and  that  the  victory  was  famous.  Southey 
doubtless  intended  this  poem  as  a  protest  against  war;  it  now 
seems  rather  an  unwitting  satire  on  historic  tradition.  For 
though  this  tradition  has  preserved  the  names  of  Blenheim  and 
of  Marlborough  and  of  Eugene,  it  has  quite  forgotten  why 
Englishmen  and  Frenchmen  were  struggling  to  the  death  in 
1704.  So  of  Fontenoy  :  tradition  keeps  surely  alive  only  a 
doubtful  anecdote  that  when  the  French  and  English  were 
face  to  face,  some  French  officer  pulled  off  his  hat  with  a 
polite  bow  and  civilly  invited  the  enemy  to  fire  first.  The 
other  two  battles  which  we  have  called  to  mind,  those  of 
Quebec  and  of  the  Nile,  were  fought  in  the  second  half  of 
the  century  ;  and  of  these  tradition  still  remembers  the  objects. 
The  battle  of  Quebec  finally  assured  the  dominance  in  America 
of  the  English  Law.  The  battle  of  the  Nile  began  to  check 
that  French  revolutionary  power  which  under  the  transitory 
empire  of  Napoleon  had  seemed  about  to  conquer  the  whole 
civilised  world,  and  which  met  its  final  defeat  seventeen  years 
later  at  Waterloo. 

The  names  of  Blenheim  and  the  Nile  suggest  one  more 
fact :  each  of  these  battles  gave  England  a  national  hero. 
Marlborough  we  have  already  glanced  at,  —  a  soldier  of  the 
closing  seventeenth  century  as  well  as  of  the  dawning  eight 
eenth,  whose  career  asserted  that  in  the  political  struggles 
of  continental  Europe  England  could  never  be  left  out  of 


62  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

account.  Nelson,  whose  name  is  almost  as  familiarly  asso 
ciated  with  the  battle  of  the  Nile  as  with  his  victorious 
death  at  Trafalgar,  stood  for  even  more;  he  embodied  not 
only  that  dominion  of  the  sea  which  since  his  time  England 
has  maintained,  but  also  that  imperial  power  —  for  in  his 
time  England  was  already  becoming  imperial  —  which  was 
able  to  withstand  and  to  destroy  the  imperial  force  of  France 
incarnate  in  Napoleon.  Imperial  though  Nelson's  victories 
were,  however,  Nelson  himself  was  almost  typically  insular. 
It  is  hardly  a  play  on  words  to  say  that  as  we  compare 
Marlborough,  the  chief  English  hero  of  the  opening  century, 
with  Nelson,  the  chief  English  hero  of  its  close,  Marl- 
borough  seems  a  European  and  Nelson  an  Englishman. 
This  fact  implies  the  whole  course  of  English  history  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  Just  as  the  internal  history  of 
England  tended  to  a  more  and  more  conservative  preserva 
tion  of  public  order,  so  her  international  history  tended  more 
and  more  to  make  Englishmen  a  race  apart. 

Before  the  century  was  much  more  than  half  done,  this 
insular  English  race  had  on  its  hands  something  more  than 
the  island  where  its  language,  its  laws,  its  traditions,  and  its 
character  had  been  developed ;  something  more,  besides,  than 
those  American  colonies  whose  history  during  their  first  cen 
tury  we  have  already  traced.  As  the  name  of  Quebec  has 
already  reminded  us,  the  wars  with  the  French  had  finally 
resulted  in  the  conquest  by  the  English  Law  of  those  Ameri 
can  regions  which  had  threatened  to  make  American  history 
that  of  a  ceaseless  conflict  between  English  institutions  and 
those  of  continental  Europe.  The  same  years  which  had 
brought  about  the  conquest  of  Canada  had  also  achieved  the 
conquest  of  that  Indian  Empire  which  still  makes  England 
potent  in  Asia.  In  1760,  when  George  III.  came  to  the 
throne,  imperial  England,  which  included  the  thirteen  colonies 
of  North  America,  seemed  destined  to  impose  its  image  on  the 
greatest  continents  of  both  hemispheres. 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  63 

Twenty  years  later  the  American  Revolution  had  broken  all 
political  union  between  those  regions  in  the  old  world  and  in 
the  new  which  have  steadily  been  dominated  by  English 
Law.  That  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  the  Common  Law 
has  been  able  to  survive  this  shock  is  perhaps  the  most  con 
clusive  evidence  of  vitality  in  its  long  and  varied  history.  The 
Revolution  itself  we  shall  consider  more  closely  later  :  one  fact 
about  it  we  may  remark  here.  Until  the  Revolution,  America, 
like  England,  had  considered  France  a  traditional  enemy. 
Open  warfare  with  England  naturally  brought  America  and 
France  together;  without  French  aid,  indeed,  our  independ 
ence  could  hardly  have  been  established.  A  very  few  years, 
then,  awoke  among  Americans  a  general  sentiment,  which 
their  tradition  has  steadily  maintained,  of  strong  nominal  sym 
pathy  with  the  French.  At  the  moment  when  this  declared 
itself,  as  any  one  can  now  see,  France,  regardless  of  any  such 
impediment  to  freedom  of  thought  as  might  lurk  in  the  facts 
of  human  experience,  was  vigorously,  blindly  developing  that 
abstract  philosophy  of  human  rights  which  less  than  twenty 
years  later  resulted  in  the  tragic  convulsions  of  the  French 
Revolution.  The  fascinating  commonplaces  of  this  philoso 
phy  were  eagerly  welcomed  in  America,  where  they  have 
been  popularly  repeated  ever  since.  From  that  time  to  this, 
indeed,  American  talk  has  been  so  radical  that  comparatively 
few  appreciate  how  slightly  all  these  glittering  generalities 
have  really  distorted  American  conduct  from  the  good  old 
principle  that  true  human  rights  are  those  which  experience 
has  proved  beneficial.  In  no  way,  however,  has  America 
evinced  its  English  origin  more  clearly  than  by  the  serenity 
with  which  it  has  forbidden  logic  to  meddle  with  the  substan 
tial  maintenance  of  legal  institutions. 

But  our  concern  now  is  with  England,  who  found  herself, 
when  the  French  Revolution  came,  the  chief  conservative 
power  of  Europe.  The  conservatism  for  which  she  stood, 
and  has  stood  ever  since,  is  of  the  kind  which  defends  tradi- 


64  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

tion  against  the  assaults  of  untested  theory.  Without  ignor 
ing  human  rights,  it  maintains  that  the  most  precious  human 
rights  are  those  which  have  proved  humanly  feasible ;  ab 
stract  ideals  of  law  and  government,  however  admirable  on 
paper,  it  regards  with  such  suspicion  as  in  daily  life  practi 
cal  men  feel  concerning  the  vagaries  of  plausible  thinkers 
who  cannot  make  both  ends  meet.  The  conservatism  of 
eighteenth-century  England,  in  short,  defended  against  un 
tested  philosophy  the  experience  embodied  in  the  unwritten 
Common  Law ;  it  defended  custom,  which  at  worst  had 
proved  tolerable,  against  theory,  which  had  never  been  put  to 
proof.  So  in  this  closing  struggle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
which  continued  for  half  a  generation  after  the  century  ended, 
external  forces  combined  with  internal  ones,  —  with  a  full 
century  of  domestic  peace,  and  the  final  settlement  of  the 
royal  succession,  —  to  develop  in  England  that  isolated,  de 
liberate,  somewhat  slow-witted  character  which  foreigners 
now  suppose  permanently  English. 

The  typical  Englishman  of  modern  caricature  is  named  John 
Bull.  What  he  looks  like  is  as  familiar  to  any  reader  of  the 
comic  papers  as  is  the  "  austerely  sheepish  "  countenance  of 
Stuart's  Washington.  There  is  a  deep  significance,  then,  in 
the  fact  that  the  costume  still  attributed  to  John  Bull  is  virtu 
ally  that  of  the  English  middle  classes  in  1800.  No  date 
better  marks  the  moment  when  external  forces  and  internal 
had  combined  to  make  typical  of  England  the  insular,  vigor 
ous,  intolerant  character  embodied  in  that  familiar  and  portly 
figure.  Whatever  else  John  Bull  may  be,  he  is  not  sponta 
neous  in  his  reactions  to  fresh  impressions ;  he  is  not  enthu 
siastic,  except  in  irascibility ;  and  he  is  about  as  far  from 
versatile  as  any  human  being  who  ever  trod  the  earth. 


II 

ENGLISH  LITERATURE  FROM  iyOO  TO  l8oO 

THE  English  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  very 
different  from  that  of  the  century  before.  The  contrast  may 
conveniently  be  considered  by  comparing  the  two  periods  as 
they  began,  as  they  proceeded,  and  as  they  closed.  The  three 
literary  periods  of  the  seventeenth  century  were  dominated  by 
three  great  figures,  —  those  of  Shakspere,  of  Milton,  and  of 
Dryden.  While  no  such  eminence  as  theirs  marks  the  literary 
history  of  the  century  with  which  we  are  now  concerned, 
three  typical  figures  of  its  different  periods  may  conveniently 
be  called  to  mind,  —  Addison,  Johnson,  and  Burke.  The  very 
mention  of  these  names  must  instantly  define  the  contrast  now 
worth  our  attention.  The  seventeenth  century  was  one  of 
decided  literary  development,  or  at  least  of  change.  In  com 
parison  the  eighteenth  century  was  one  of  marked  monotony. 

The  literature  of  its  beginning  is  traditionally  associated 
with  the  name  of  Queen  Anne  almost  as  closely  as  that  of 
a  hundred  years  before  is  with  the  name  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
In  1702,  when  Anne  came  to  the  throne,  neither  Addison, 
Steele,  Swift,  Defoe,  nor  Pope  had  attained  full  reputation ; 
in  1714,  when  she  died,  all  five  had  done  enough  to  assure 
their  permanence,  and  to  fix  the  type  of  literature  for  which 
their  names  collectively  stand.  Prose  they  had  brought  to 
that  deliberate,  balanced,  far  from  passionate  form  which  it 
was  to  retain  for  several  generations ;  poetry  they  had  cooled 
into  that  rational  heroic  couplet  which  was  to  survive  in 
America  until  the  last  days  of  Dr.  Holmes.  They  had 
brought  into  being  meanwhile  a  new  form  of  publication, — 

(,5 


66  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  periodical,  —  destined  to  indefinite  development.  From 
the  time  when  the  first  "Tatler"  appeared  in  1709  to  the 
present  day,  a  considerable  part  of  our  lasting  literature  has 
been  published  in  periodicals;  and  periodicals  bespeak,  before 
all  things  else,  a  permanent  and  increasing  literary  public.  If 
any  one  name  can  imply  all  this,  it  is  surely  that  of  the  urbane 
Joseph  Addison. 

In  the  middle  of  the  century,  when  the  reign  of  George  II. 
was  two-thirds  over,  English  literature  was  producing  a  good 
many  works  which  have  survived.     Between   1748  and  1752, 
for  example,  there  were  published,  to  go  no  further,  Richard 
son's  "  Clarissa   Harlowe,"   Smollett's   "  Roderick  Random  " 
and  "  Peregrine  Pickle,"  Thomson's  "  Castle  of  Indolence," 
Fielding's  "  Tom  Jones  "  and  "  Amelia,"  Johnson's  "  Vanity  of 
Human  Wishes  "  and  a  considerable  portion  of  the  "  Rambler," 
Gray's  "  Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard,"  and   Goldsmith's 
"  Life    of    Nash."       Sterne's    work    and    Goldsmith's    more 
famous   writing   came  only  a  little   later;    and   during    these 
same  five  years  appeared   Wesley's   "  Plain  Account  of  the 
People  Called  Methodists,"  Hume's  "Inquiry  into  the  Human 
Understanding,"  —  and  his  "  Inquiry  concerning  the  Principles 
of  Morals  "  and  "  Political  Discourses."     Though  the  works 
of  Wesley  and  of  Hume  are  something  else  than  mere  litera 
ture,  they  deserve  our  notice  because  Wesley's  name  recalls 
that  strenuous  outburst  against  religious  formalism  which  has 
bred  the  most  potent  body  of  modern  English  Dissenters,  and 
Hume's  that  rational  tendency  in  philosophy  which  during  the 
eighteenth  century  was  far  more  characteristic  of  France  than 
of  England.      Putting  these  aside,  we  may  find  in  the  literary 
record  of  this  mid-century  a  state  of  things  somewhat  differ 
ent  from  that  which  prevailed  under  Queen  Anne.     Another 
considerable  form  of  English  literature  had  come  into  exist 
ence,  —  the  prose  novel,  whose  germs  were  already  evident  in 
the  character  sketches  of  the  "  Spectator,"  and  in  the  charac 
terless  but   vivacious   fictions  of   Defoe.     Poetry,   preserving 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  67 

studied  correctness  of  form,  was  beginning  to  tend  back  toward 
something  more  like  romantic  sentiment ;  the  prose  essay  had 
grown  heavier  and  less  vital.  For  the  moment  the  presiding 
genius  of  English  letters  was  Dr.  Johnson,  throughout  whose 
work  we  can  feel  that  the  formalism  which  under  Queen 
Anne  had  possessed  the  grace  of  freshness  was  becoming  tra 
ditional.  In  conventional  good  sense  his  writings,  like  those 
which  surrounded  them,  remained  vigorous  ;  but  their  vigour 
was  very  unlike  the  spontaneous,  enthusiastic  versatility  of 
Elizabethan  letters. 

About  twenty-five  years  later  comes  a  date  so  memorable 
to  Americans  that  a  glance  at  its  literary  record  in  England 
can  hardly  help  being  suggestive.  The  year  from  which  our 
national  independence  is  officially  dated  came  at  the  height 
of  Burke's  powers,  and  just  between  Sheridan's  "  Rivals," 
published  the  year  before,  and  his  "  School  for  Scandal,"  of 
the  year  after.  In  the  record  of  English  publications,  1776 
is  marked  by  no  important  works  of  pure  literature ;  but  in 
that  year  Hume  died,  Jeremy  Bentham  published  his  "  Frag 
ment  on  Government,"  Gibbon  the  first  volume  of  his  "  De 
cline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  Adam  Smith  his 
"  Wealth  of  Nations,"  and  Thomas  Paine  his  "  Common 
Sense ;  "  the  second  edition  of  the  "  Encyclopedia  Britannica," 
too,  appeared  in  ten  volumes.  In  1776,  it  seems,  things 
literary  in  England,  as  well  as  things  political  in  the  British 
Empire,  were  taking  a  somewhat  serious  turn. 

In  the  last  ten  years  of  the  century,  the  years  when  the 
French  Revolution  was  at  its  fiercest,  there  appeared  in  Eng 
land  works  by  Burke  and  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  Boswell's  "  John 
son,"  Cowper's  "  Homer,"  Paine's  "  Rights  of  Man,"  Rogers's 
u  Pleasures  of  Memory,"  poems  by  Burns,  two  or  three  books 
by  Hannah  More,  the  first  poems  of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
Southey,  Scott,  and  Landor,  Godwin's  "  Caleb  Williams," 
Lewis's  "  Monk,"  Miss  Burney's  "  Camilla,"  Roscoe's  "  Life 
of  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,"  and  Charles  Lamb's  "  Rosamund 


68  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

Gray."  A  curious  contrast  this  shows  to  the  state  of  things 
in  contemporary  France.  Though  in  political  matters  the 
French  had  broken  away  from  every  tradition,  their  literature 
had  to  wait  thirty  years  more  for  enfranchisement  from  the 
tyranny  of  conventional  form.  England  meanwhile,  more 
tenacious  of  political  tradition  than  ever  before,  had  begun  to 
disregard  the  rigid  literary  tradition  which  had  been  dominant 
since  the  time  of  Dryden.  Burns,  to  this  day  the  greatest 
British  poet  of  the  people,  died  in  1796.  The  "  Lyrical  Bal 
lads  "  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  which  may  be  regarded 
in  literature  as  declaring  the  independence  of  the  individual 
spirit,  appeared  in  1798,  the  year  when  Nelson  fought  the 
battle  of  the  Nile.  Fiction  at  the  same  time  seemed  less  vital. 
In  the  hands  of  Richardson,  Fielding,  and  Smollett  it  had 
reached  high  development.  Compared  with  the  masterpieces 
of  forty  years  before,  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  "  Mysteries  of  Udolpho," 
Lewis's  "  Monk,"  and  in  some  aspects  even  Godwin's  "  Caleb 
Williams,"  look  more  like  the  vagaries  of  an  outworn  affec 
tation  than  like  the  heralds  of  what  a  few  years  later  was  to 
prove  a  great  romantic  period.  In  the  last  decade  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  though  formal  tradition  was  clearly  broken, 
the  renewed  strength  which  was  to  animate  English  literature 
for  the  next  thirty  years  was  not  yet  quite  evident.  At  the 
moment,  too,  no  figure  in  English  letters  had  even  such 
predominance  as  that  of  Addison  in  Queen  Anne's  time, 
far  less  such  as  Johnson's  had  been  in  the  later  years  of 
George  II.  Of  the  elder  names  mentioned  in  our  last  hasty 
list  the  most  memorable  seems  that  of  Burke. 

These  names  of  Addison,  Johnson,  and  Burke  prove  quite 
as  significant  of  English  literature  in  the  eighteenth  century 
as  those  of  Shakspere,  Milton,  and  Dryden  proved  of  that 
literature  a  century  before.  Shakspere,  Milton,  and  Dryden 
seem  men  of  three  different  epochs ;  at  least  comparatively, 
Addison,  Johnson,  and  Burke  seem  men  of  a  single  type. 
The  trait  which  most  distinguishes  them  from  one  another, 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  69 

indeed,  seems  that  Johnson's  temper  was  rather  more  serious 
than  that  of  Addison,  and  Burke's  than  Johnson's.  After  all, 
the  mere  names  tell  enough.  Think  of  Shakspere  and  Dryden 
together,  and  then  of  Addison  and  Burke.  Think  of  Milton 
as  the  figure  who  intervenes  between  the  first  pair,  and  of 
Johnson  similarly  intervening  between  the  second.  You  can 
hardly  fail  to  perceive  the  trend  of  English  letters.  In  1600 
these  letters  were  alive  with  the  spontaneity,  the  enthusiasm, 
and  the  versatility  of  the  Elizabethan  spirit.  By  Dryden's 
time  this  was  already  extinct  ;  throughout  the  century  which 
followed  him  it  showed  little  symptom  of  revival.  The  ro 
mantic  revival  which  in  Burke's  time  was  just  beginning, 
had,  to  be  sure,  enthusiasm  ;  but  this  was  too  conscious  to 
seem  spontaneous.  And  although  the  names  of  Rogers, 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Lamb,  Landor,  and  Moore,  who  had 
all  begun  writing  before  1800,  suggest  something  like  ver 
satility,  it  is  rather  variety.  They  differ  from  one  another, 
but  compared  with  the  Elizabethan  poets  each  seems  limited, 
inflexible.  Taken  together,  their  works  combine  in  compli 
cated  orchestral  harmonies.  To  the  end,  however,  you  can 
hardly  imagine  any  of  them  as  master  of  more  than  a  single 
instrument.  Versatility  can  hardly  be  held  to  characterise 
any  English  man  of  letters  who  came  to  maturity  in  the 
eighteenth  century. 

So  far  as  literature  is  concerned,  then,  that  century  seems 
more  and  more  what  the  commonplaces  of  the  school-books 
call  it,  a  century  of  robustly  formal  tradition ;  rational,  sen 
sible,  prejudiced,  and  towards  the  end  restless  ;  admirable  and 
manly  in  a  thousand  ways,  but  further,  if  so  may  be,  from  the 
spontaneous,  enthusiastic  versatility  of  Elizabethan  days  than 
was  the  period  of  Dryden.  Above  all,  throughout  this  eight 
eenth  century,  English  literature,  like  English  history,  seems 
more  and  more  marked  by  that  kind  of  insular  temper  which 
nowadays  we  unthinkingly  believe  always  to  have  character 
ised  the  English. 


Ill 

AMERICAN    HISTORY    FROM     iyOO    TO     l8oO 

IN  broad  outline  the  history  of  America  during  the  eighteenth 
century  seems  as  different  from  that  of  England  as  was  the 
case  a  century  earlier.  Two  facts  which  we  remarked  in 
seventeenth-century  America  remained  unchanged.  In  the 
first  place  no  one  really  cared  much  who  occupied  the  throne. 
To  any  American,  the  question  of  who  was  sent  out  as  gov 
ernor  was  generally  more  important  than  that  of  who  sent 
him.  In  the  second  place,  the  absorptive  power  of  the 
native  American  race  remained  undiminished,  as  indeed  it 
seems  still  to  remain.  Though  there  was  comparatively  less 
immigration  to  America  in  the  eighteenth  century  than  in  the 
seventeenth  or  the  nineteenth,  there  was  enough  to  show  our 
surprising  power  of  assimilation. 

In  another  aspect,  the  history  of  America  during  the  eight 
eenth  century  is  unlike  that  of  the  century  before.  Until 
1700,  at  least  in  New  England,  the  dominant  English  ideal 
had  been  rather  the  moral  than  the  political,  —  the  tradition 
of  the  English  Bible  rather  than  that  of  the  Common  Law. 
The  fathers  of  New  England  had  almost  succeeded  in  estab 
lishing  "  a  theocracy  as  near  as  might  be  to  that  which  was 
the  glory  of  Israel."  The  story  of  the  Mathers  shows  how 
this  theocratic  ambition  came  to  grief.  Church  and  State  in 
America  tended  to  separate  with  true  Protestant  antagonism. 
Once  separate,  the  State  was  bound  to  control  in  public  affairs  ; 
and  so  the  Church  began  to  decline  into  such  formalism  as 
later  times,  mistaking  the  lifeless  rigidity  of  Puritan  decline 
for  the  whole  story,  have  been  apt  to  believe  all  Puritanism. 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  71 

So,  speaking  very  generally,  we  may  call  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury  in  America  one  of  growing  material  prosperity,  under 
the  chief  guidance  no  longer  of  the  clergy,  but  rather  of  that 
social  class  to  whose  commercial  energy  this  prosperity  was 
chiefly  due. 

It  is  to  the  eighteenth  century,  indeed,  and  to  the  pre-revo- 
lutionary  part  of  it,  that  New  England  families  owe  most  of 
the  portraits  which  still  attest  their  ancestral  dignity,  now  so 
often  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  best  of  these  portraits  were 
painted  by  the  father  of  the  celebrated  Lord  Lyndhurst.  This 
was  John  Singleton  Copley,  a  native  of  Boston  who  emi 
grated  to  England  about  the  time  of  the  Revolution  and 
remained  there  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Whoever  knows 
Copley's  American  portraits  will  recognise  in  the  people  he 
painted  a  type  of  native  Americans  which  had  hardly  de 
veloped  in  the  seventeenth  century  and  which  hardly  survived 
the  Revolution. 

These  old  New  England  worthies  were  mostly  merchants 
who  owed  their  fortune  to  their  own  ability.  To  take  a  single 
family,  for  example,  there  lived  in  Cambridge  during  the  seven 
teenth  century  a  presumably  God-fearing  man  in  no  way 
related  to  the  dominant  clerical  class  or  to  the  families  con 
spicuous  in  the  government  of  the  colony.  He  was  in  some 
small  way  of  trade,  he  married  four  times,  and  he  left  a  great 
many  children.  One  of  these  removed  to  Boston,  where  he 
so  prospered  as  to  be  able  in  his  last  years  to  present  to  the 
Second  Church,  then  under  the  ministry  of  Cotton  Mather, 
a  silver  communion  cup.  His  son,  a  grandson  of  the  prolific 
tradesman  of  Cambridge,  became  a  merchant  of  local  emi 
nence,  whose  affairs  brought  him  into  correspondence  not  only 
with  England,  but  with  France,  Portugal,  and  the  Indies.  He 
married  a  lady  whose  family  from  the  earliest  days  of  the  colony 
had  maintained  the  dignity  of  what  old  Yankees  used  to  call 
quality.  And  Copley  painted  them  both ;  and  very  stately  old 
figures  they  are  j  and  their  silver  bears  a  fine  coat  of  arms. 


72  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

So  far  the  story  is  quite  like  that  of  prosperous  people  in 
the  old  country.  The  difference  lies  in  the  fact  that  when 
this  old  Boston  worthy  had  made  his  fortune  he  found  him 
self  in  a  society  where  there  was  neither  a  nobility  nor  a  landed 
gentry  to  deprive  him  of  social  distinction.  The  state  of  per 
sonal  feeling  which  ensued,  familiar  throughout  American  his 
tory,  was  different  from  what  any  man  of  just  this  class  has 
generally  felt  in  England,  and  more  like  that  of  the  grander 
merchants  of  Venice.  As  a  prosperous  man  of  affairs,  he  felt 
all  the  unquestioning  sense  of  personal  dignity  which  every 
where  marks  the  condition  of  a  gentleman.  Superficially, 
perhaps  in  consequence,  his  manners  seem  to  have  become 
rather  more  like  those  of  fashionable  England  than  had  been 
common  in  earlier  America.  A  fragment  from  a  letter  ad 
dressed  him  during  the  Revolution  by  the  minister  of  the 
church  where  he  was  for  years  a  deacon  will  tell  something 
of  his  temper.  The  reverend  gentleman  was  travelling  in  the 
Middle  States,  where  he  had  been  impressed  by  the  Moravian 
settlement  at  Bethlehem,  Pennsylvania;  and  he  commented 
on  it  as  follows  :  — 

"  The  Nunnery,  as  they  call  it,  is  an  object  of  curiosity.  A  picture 
of  diligence,  but  as  I  could  not  but  observe,  much  to  the  ruining  of 
their  health  &  to  the  destruction  of  the  social  disposition.  About 
sixty  or  more  girls  kept  entirely  to  work  without  any  recreation  or 
amusement  &  without  any  intercourse  with  men,  under  the  strict 
orders  of  an  Old  Maid  Governess.  Judge  how  miserable  must  be 
their  condition  !  —  Their  complexions  are  sallow,  &  discontentment 
is  painted  on  every  countenance.  More  ordinary  people  I  never  saw. 
A  remark  struck  me  when  I  heard  an  Old  Man  praise  the  conduct  of 
our  soldiers  when  they  were  in  Bethlehem.  He  said  there  was  no 
one  instance  where  they  attempted  the  chastity  of  their  women,  which 
I  could  impute  to  another  cause  besides  their  love  of  virtue.  For  No 
woman  need  have  against  a  Man  any  other  armour  than  her  ugliness, 
&  the  Girls  at  Bethlehem  are  well  equipped  with  this  Coat  of  Mail" 

It  is  doubtful  whether  such  words  would  have  been  apt  to 
proceed  in  eighteenth-century  England  from  a  devout  dissenting 
minister  to  a  bell-wether  of  his  flock.  They  read  more  like 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  73 

the  correspondence  of  men  of  the  world.  The  Revolution 
destroyed  the  fortunes  and  the  social  leadership  of  this  class. 
To  find  such  people  again  in  America,  we  must  probably 
wait  until  after  the  Civil  War. 

But,  after  all,  this  development  of  a  small  class  into  full 
contemporary  vigour  did  not  much  affect  what  is  often  called 
the  bone  and  the  sinew  of  the  American  commonwealth,  nor 
indeed  did  it  result  in  any  serious  social  breach.  Our  mer 
cantile  aristocracy  was  not  hereditary ;  if  fortune  failed,  its 
members  reverted  almost  immediately  to  the  sound  old  native 
type,  and  able  people  were  continually  making  their  way  into 
that  fortunate  class  whose  prosperity  the  Revolution  brought 
to  an  end. 

Meanwhile  throughout  the  first  half  of  our  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  external  affairs  constantly  took  a  pretty  definite  form.~4 
Increased  commercial  prosperity  and  superficial  social  changes 
could  not  alter  the  fact  that  until  the  conquest  of  Canada  the 
English  colonies  in  America  were  constantly  menaced  by 
disturbances  which  Yankee  tradition  still  calls  the  French  and 
Indian  wars.  These  began  before  the  seventeenth  century 
closed.  In  1690  Sir  William  Phips  captured  Port  Royal,  now 
Annapolis,  in  Nova  Scotia ;  later  in  the  year  he  came  to  grief 
in  an  expedition  against  Quebec  itself  j  in  1704  came  the 
still  remembered  sack  of  Deerfield  in  the  Connecticut  valley  ; 
in  1745  came  Sir  William  Pepperell's  somewhat  fortuitous 
conquest  of  Louisbourg  ;  in  1755  came  Braddock's  defeat;  in 
1 759  came  Wolfe's  final  conquest  at  Quebec.  The  whole  story 
is  excellently  told  in  the  works  of  Francis  Parkman.  As  we 
have  seen  before,  these  really  record  the  struggle  which  de 
cided  the  future  of  America.  When  the  eighteenth  century"*; 
began,  —  as  the  encircling  names  of  Quebec,  Montreal, 
Chicago,  St.  Louis,  and  New  Orleans  may  still  remind  us,  — 
it  was  doubtful  whether  the  continent  which  is  now  the 
United  States  should  ultimately  be  controlled  by  the  traditions 
of  England  or  by  those  of  continental  Europe.  Throughout 


74  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  this  question  was  still 
in  doubt, — never  more  so,  perhaps,  than  when  Braddock 
fell  in  what  is  now  Western  Pennsylvania.  The  victory  on 
the  Plains  of  Abraham  settled  the  fate  of  a  hemisphere.  Once 
for  all,  the  continent  of  America  passed  into  the  control  of 
the  race  which  still  maintains  there  the  traditions  of  the 
English  Law. 

In  the  second  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  there 
declared  itself  throughout  British  America  a  movement  which 
throw's  a  good  deal  of  light  on  American  temperament.  As 
we  saw  in  our  glance  at  English  literature,  one  of  the  writers 
still  busy  in  1750  was  John  Wesley,  the  founder  of  that  great 
dissenting  sect  commonly  called  Methodist.  This  originated 
in  a  fervent  evangelical  protest  against  the  corrupt,  unspir- 
itualised  condition  of  the  English  Church  during  the  reign  of 
George  II.  Though  Methodism  made  permanent  impression 
on  the  middle  class  of  England,  however,  it  can  hardly  be 
regarded  in  England  as  a  social  force  of  the  first  historical 
importance.  Nor  were  any  of  its  manifestations  there  salient 
enough  to  attract  the  instant  attention  of  people  who  consider 
general  English  history.  In  America  the  case  was  different. 
During  the  earlier  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Puritan 
churches  had  begun  to  stiffen  into  formalism.  Though  this 
never  went  so  far  as  to  divorce  religion  from  life,  or  to  let 
native  Yankees  long  forget  the  main  tenets  of  Calvinism,  there 
was  such  decline  of  religious  fervour  as  to  give  the  more 
earnest  clergy  serious  ground  for  alarm. 

In  1738  George  Whitefield,  perhaps  the  most  powerful  of 
English  revivalists,  first  visited  the  colonies.  In  that  year 
he  devoted  himself  to  the  spiritual  awakening  of  Georgia. 
In  1740  he  came  to  New  England.  The  Great  Awakening 
of  religion  during  the  next  few  years  was  largely  due  to  his 
preaching.  At  first  the  clergy  were  disposed  ardently  to  wel 
come  this  revival  of  religious  enthusiasm.  Soon,  however,  the 
revival  took  a  turn  of  which  we  may  best  form  a  conception 


AMERICAN  HISTORY 


75 


by  supposing  that  half  the  respectable  classes  of  New  England 
should  fervently  abandon  their  earthly  affairs,  and,  enrolling 
themselves  under  the  banners  of  the  Salvation  Army,  should 
proceed  to  camp-meetings  of  the  most  enthusiastic  disorder. 

The  more  conservative  clergy  were  alarmed;  in  1744 
Harvard  College  formally  protested  against  the  excesses  of 
Whitefield,  and  in  1745  Yale  followed  this  example.  The 
religious  enthusiasm  which  possessed  the  lower  classes  of 
eighteenth-century  America,  in  short,  grotesquely  outran  the 
gravely  passionate  ecstasies  of  the  immigrant  Puritans.  So 
late  as  Cotton  Mather's  time,  the  devout  of  New  England 
were  still  rewarded  with  mystic  visions,  wherein  divine  voices 
and  heavenly  figures  revealed  themselves  to  prayerful  keepers 
of  fasts  and  vigils.  The  Great  Awakening  which  expressed 
itself  in  mad  shoutings  and  tearing  off  of  garments  was  more 
like  what  the  earlier  Puritans  had  deemed  the  diabolical 
excesses  of  Quakerism.  The  personal  contrast  between  the 
immigrant  Puritans  and  Whitefield  typifies  the  difference. 
The  old  ministers  had  entered  on  their  duties  with  all  the 
authority  of  scholars  from  English  universities;  Whitefield 
began  his  career  as  an  inspired  potboy  who  emerged  from 
a  tavern  of  the  lower  kind.  Seventeenth-century  Puritanism 
was  a  profound  and  lasting  spiritual  power ;  Whitefield's  re 
vival  was  rather  an  outburst  of  ranting  excess.  Yet  for  all  this 
excess  the  Great  Awakening  testifies  to  one  lasting  fact,  —  a 
far-reaching  spontaneity  and  enthusiasm  among  the  humble 
classes  of  America,  which,  once  aroused,  could  produce  social 
phenomena  much  more  startling  than  Methodism  produced  in 
King  George  II. 's  England. 

The  people  who  had  been  so  profoundly  stirred  by  this 
Great  Awakening  were  the  same  who  in  1776  declared  them 
selves  independent  of  the  mother  country.  The  American 
Revolution  is  important  enough  for  separate  consideration. 
Before  speaking  of  that,  we  had  best  consider  the  literary  ex 
pression  of  America  up  to  1776.  Here,  then,  we  need  only 


76  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

recall  a  few  dates.  The  Stamp  Act  was  passed  in  1765,  the 
year  in  which  Blackstone  published  the  first  volume  of  his 
"  Commentaries  on  the  Law  of  England."  Lexington,  Con 
cord,  and  Bunker  Hill  came  in  1775,  the  year  in  which  Burke 
delivered  his  masterly  speech  on  "  Conciliation  with  America/' 
On  the  Glorious  Fourth  of  July,  1776,  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  signed.  American  independence  was  finally 
acknowledged  by  the  peace  of  1783.  The  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  was  adopted  in  1789.  In  1800  the  presi 
dency  of  John  Adams  was  drawing  to  a  close,  and  Washington 
was  dead.  Now,  very  broadly  speaking,  the  forces  which  ex 
pressed  themselves  in  these  familiar  facts  were  forces  which 
tended  in  America  to  destroy  the  mercantile  class  whom  Cop 
ley  painted,  and  to  substitute  as  the  ruling  class  throughout 
the  country  one  more  like  that  which  had  been  stirred  by  the 
Great  Awakening.  In  other  words,  the  Revolution  once 
more  brought  to  the  surface  of  American  life  the  sort  of 
natives  whom  the  Great  Awakening  shows  so  fully  to  have 
preserved  the  spontaneity  and  the  enthusiasm  of  earlier  days. 

A  trifling  anecdote  may  perhaps  define  this  somewhat 
vague  generalisation.  In  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  at  Bos 
ton  is  a  room  which  contains  a  number  of  portraits  by 
Copley,  representing  the  mercantile  aristocracy  of  the  town 
a  few  years  before  the  American  Revolution.  To  this 
room,  not  long  ago,  there  chanced  to  stray  a  gentleman 
eminent  in  the  political  and  social  life  of  a  modern  English 
colony.  A  shrewd  man,  of  wide  experience,  he  had  found  the 
United  States  a  little  puzzling.  The  sight  of  these  Copley 
portraits  was  to  him  as  a  burst  of  light.  He  laughed,  and 
pointing  to  the  wall  which  their  dignity  adorns,  exclaimed  : 
"  Why,  that 's  the  sort  of  people  we  are  !  "  The  sort  of 
people  whom  Copley  painted,  in  short,  still  socially  and  politi 
cally  control  the  British  colonies.  Except  for  the  Revolution, 
they  might  still  have  controlled  America. 

During  the  eighteenth  century,  then,  America  seems  slowly 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  77 

to  have  been  developing  into  an  independent  nationality  as 
conservative  of  its  traditions  as  England  was  of  hers,  but  less 
obviously  so  because  American  traditions  were  far  less 
threatened.  The  geographical  isolation  of  America  combined 
with  the  absorptive  power  of  our  native  race  to  preserve  the 
general  type  of  character  which  America  had  displayed  from 
its  settlement.  In  the  history  of  native  Americans,  the 
seventeenth  century  has  already  defined  itself  as  a  period  of 
untrammelled  inexperience.  The  fact  that  American  con 
ditions  changed  so  little  until  the  Revolution  implies  that  this 
national  inexperience  persisted.  Inexperience  leaves  character 
far  less  altered  than  can  be  the  case  when  experience  accumu 
lates.  In  many  superficial  aspects,  no  doubt,  particularly  if  of 
the  prosperous  class,  the  native  Americans  of  1776  appeared 
to  be  men  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  personal  temper,  how 
ever,  Thomas  Hutchinson  and  Samuel  Adams  were  far  more 
like  John  Winthrop  and  Roger  Williams  than  Chatham  and 
Burke  were  like  Bacon  and  Burleigh.  One  inference  seems 
clear :  the  Americans  of  the  revolutionary  period  retained  to 
an  incalculable  degree  qualities  which  had  faded  from  ancestral 
England  with  the  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 


IV 

LITERATURE    IN    AMERICA    FROM    1700    TO    1776 

UNTIL  1728,  when  Cotton  Mather  died,  the  general  state  of 
literature  in  America  remained  unaltered.  Between  1729  and 
1776,  the  titles  recorded  by  Whitcomb  indicate  decided  change 
both  in  the  character  of  the  publications  and  in  their  distribu 
tion.  Out  of  some  two  hundred  and  thirty  of  these  titles, 
only  thirty-seven  are  precisely  religious;  thirty-eight  are  histor 
ical  ;  forty-seven  are  political ;  forty-eight  —  though  none 
have  survived  in  literature  —  are  at  least'  as  literary  as  the 
verses  of  Wigglesworth  or  of  Mrs.  Bradstreet ;  and  the  rest  — 
including  scientific  works,  almanacs,  periodicals,  and  the  like 
—  can  be  classed  only  as  miscellaneous.  In  religious  writing, 
New  England  remained  more  prolific  than  the  rest  of  the 
country ;  but  the  most  memorable  religious  work  of  this 
period,  that  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  was  produced  not  in  east 
ern  Massachusetts,  but  in  the  Connecticut  valley, —  in  other 
words,  under  the  influence  not  of  Harvard  College  but  of 
Yale.  Each  of  the  other  classes  of  publication  —  historical, 
political,  literary,  and  miscellaneous  —  appeared  in  slightly 
greater  numbers  elsewhere  than  in  New  England.  These 
rough  memoranda  indicate  two  significant  facts.  As  the 
material  prosperity  of  America  increased,  it  tended  to  develop 
the  middle  colonies;  during  the  greater  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century  the  most  important  town  in  America  was  not  Boston, 
but  Philadelphia.  And  though  in  purely  religious  writing 
New  England  kept  the  lead,  the  centre  of  its  religious  thought 
had  shifted  from  the  shore  of  Massachusetts  Bay  to  that  of 
Long  Island  Sound. 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA    TO  1776       79 

Some  familiar  dates  in  the  history  of  American  education 
emphasise  these  facts.  Yale  College,  founded  in  1700,  began 
its  career  under  King  William  III.,  until  whose  reign  the  only 
established  school  of  higher  learning  in  America  had  been 
Harvard  College,  founded  under  Charles  I.  The  avowed  pur 
pose  of  the  founding  of  Yale  was  to  maintain  the  orthodox 
traditions  threatened  by  the  constantly  growing  liberalism  of 
Harvard.  Under  George  II.,  three  considerable  colleges  were 
founded  in  the  middle  colonies.  In  1746,  Princeton  College 
was  established  to  maintain  an  orthodoxy  as  stout  as  that  of 
Yale.  In  1749,  partly  under  the  auspices  of  the  American 
Philosophic  Society  which  had  lately  been  founded  by  Franklin, 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania  began  an  academic  history 
which  more  than  any  other  in  America  has  kept  free  from 
entanglement  with  dogma.  In  1754,  King's  College  was 
founded  at  New  York,  where,  under  the  name  of  Columbia, 
it  still  maintains  admirable  traditions  of  learning  in  friendly 
relation  with  the  ancestral  Church  of  England.  Meanwhile 
Harvard  College  had  done  little  more  than  preserve  its  own 
prudently  liberal  traditions,  with  no  marked  alteration  in  either 
character  or  size.  The  higher  intellectual  activity  of  America 
was  clearly  tending  for  a  while  to  centralise  itself  elsewhere 
than  in  those  New  England  regions  where  the  American  intel 
lect  had  first  been  active. 

During  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  too,  there 
had  rapidly  grown  up  in  America  a  profusion  of  periodical  pub 
lications.  We  had  no  u  Tatler,"  to  be  sure,  or  "  Spectator ;  " 
but  from  1704,  when  the  "Boston  News  Letter"  was  estab 
lished,  we  had  a  constantly  increasing  number  of  newspapers. 
A  dozen  years  before  the  Revolution  these  had  everywhere 
become  as  familiar  and  as  popular,  in  a  country  where  techni 
cal  illiteracy  was  rare,  as  were  those  annual  almanacs  which 
had  already  sprung  up  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  of  which 
the  most  highly  developed  example  was  the  "  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac,"  begun  by  Franklin  in  1733.  Pretty  clearly,  this 


8o  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

eighteenth  century  was  a  period  of  growing  intellectual  activity 
and  curiosity  among  the  whole  people  of  America ;  and  these 
same  people  were  showing  disposition  to  concern  themselves 
rather  with  the  affairs  of  this  world  than  with  those  of  the 
next. 

In  the  Middle  Colonies  there  was  meanwhile  developing 
an  aspect  of  religion  very  different  from  that  which  com 
mended  itself  to  the  orthodox  Calvinism  of  New  England. 
Undoubtedly  the  most  important  religious  writing  in  America 
at  the  period  with  which  we  are  now  concerned  was  that  of 
Jonathan  Edwards.  But  the  memory  of  another  American, 
of  widely  different  temper,  has  tended,  during  a  century  and 
more,  to  strengthen  in  the  estimation  of  those  who  love  com 
fortable  spiritual  thought  expressed  with  fervid  simplicity. 
John  Woolman  was  a  Quaker  farmer  of  New  Jersey,  born  in 
1720,  who  became  in  1746  an  itinerant  preacher,  who  began 
to  testify  vigorously  against  slavery  as  early  as  1753,  and 
who  died  during  a  visit  to  England  in  1772.  His  record  of 
a  vision  will  show  at  once  why  he  held  himself  bound  to 
oppose  slavery,  and  how  the  eternities  presented  themselves 
to  American  Quakers  of  the  eighteenth  century  :  — 

"In  a  time  of  sickness  with  the  pleurisy,  ...  I  was  brought  so 
near  the  gates  of  death  that  I  forgot  my  name.  Being  then  desirous  to 
know  who  I  was,  I  saw  a  mass  of  matter  of  a  dull,  gloomy  colour, 
between  the  south  and  the  east ;  and  was  informed  that  this  mass  was 
human  beings  in  as  great  misery  as  they  could  be  and  live ;  and  that 
I  w^s  mixed  in  with  them,  and  that  henceforth  I  might  not  consider 
myself  as  a  distinct  or  separate  being.  In  this  state  I  remained  several 
hours.  I  then  heard  a  soft,  melodious  voice,  more  pure  and  harmoni 
ous  than  any  I  had  heard  with  my  ears  before ;  I  believed  it  was  the 
voice  of  an  angel,  who  spake  to  the  other  angels.  The  words  were  ; 
*  John  Woolman  is  dead.'  I  soon  remembered  that  I  once  was  John 
Woolman,  and  being  assured  that  I  was  alive  in  the  body,  I  greatly 
wondered  what  that  heavenly  voice  could  mean.  .  .  . 

"  I  was  then  carried  in  spirit  to  the  mines,  where  poor,  oppressed 
people  were  digging  rich  treasures  for  those  called  Christians,  and 
heard  them  blaspheme  the  name  of  Christ,  at  which  I  grieved,  for  his 
name  to  me  was  precious. 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA   TO  1776        81 

"  Then  I  was  informed  that  these  heathen  were  told  that  those  who 
oppressed  them  were  the  followers  of  Christ  ;  and  they  said  amongst 
themselves,  if  Christ  directed  them  to  use  us  in  this  sort,  then  Christ 
is  a  cruel  tyrant. 

"  All  this  time  the  song  of  the  angel  remained  a  mystery  ;  and  in 
the  morning  my  dear  wife  and  some  others  coming  to  my  bedside,  I 
asked  them  if  they  knew  who  I  was  ;  and  they  telling  me  I  was  John 
Woolman,  thought  I  was  light-headed,  for  I  told  them  not  what  the 
angel  said,  nor  was  I  disposed  to  talk  much  to  any  one,  but  was  very 
desirous  to  get  so  deep  that  I  might  understand  this  mystery. 

"  My  tongue  was  often  so  dry  that  I  could  not  speak  till  I  had 
moved  it  about  and  gathered  some  moisture,  and  as  I  lay  still  for  a 
time,  at  length  I  felt  divine  power  prepare  my  mouth  that  I  could 
speak,  and  then  I  said :  *  I  am  crucified  with  Christ,  nevertheless  I 
live;  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  that  liveth  in  me;  and  the  life  I  now  live  in 
the  flesh  is  by  faith  in  the  Son  of  God,  who  loved  me,  and  gave 
himself  for  me.* 

"  Then  the  mystery  was  opened,  and  I  perceived  there  was  joy  in 
heaven  over  a  sinner  who  had  repented,  and  that  the  language  — 
'John  Woolman  is  dead  '  —  meant  no  more  than  the  death  of  my  own 
will." 

According  to  the  Quaker  faith,  in  brief,  man  was  not  essen 
tially  lost,  nor  was  God  the  grimly  just  autocrat  of  Calvinism. 
The  Quakers,  to  quote  one  of  themselves,  "  drank  in  the 
truth  of  the  universal  love  of  God  to  all  men  in  Christian, 
Jewish,  or  Pagan  lands,  that  God  so  loved  the  world  that  He 
sent  His  Son,  that  Christ  died  for  all  men,  and  that  His 
atonement  availed  for  all  who  in  every  land  accepted  the  light 
with  which  He  enlightened  their  minds  and  consciences,  and 
who  listening  to  His  still  small  voice  in  the  soul  turned  in  any 
true  sense  toward  God,  away  from  evil  and  to  the  right  and 
loving."  If  we  choose,  these  Quakers  held,  we  may  save 
ourselves  by  voluntarily  accepting  Christ  —  by  willing  atten 
tion  to  the  still  small  voice  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

Though  words  like  Woolman's  throw  light  on  a  growing 
phase  of  American  sentiment,  however,  they  are  not  precisely 
literature.  Neither  was  such  political  writing  as  we  shall  con 
sider  more  particularly  when  we  come  to  the  Revolution  ;  nor 
yet  was  the  more  scholarly  historical  writing  of  which  the  prin- 

6 


82  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

cipal  example  is  probably  Thomas  Hutchinson's  "  History  of 
the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay."  The  first  volume  of  this 
appeared  in  1764.  Neglected  by  reason  of  the  traditional 
unpopularity  which  sincere,  self-sacrificing  Toryism  brought 
on  the  last  native  governor  of  provincial  Massachusetts,  this 
remains  an  admirable  piece  of  serious  historical  writing,  not 
vivid,  picturesque,  or  very  interesting,  but  dignified,  earnest, 
and  just.  In  the  history  of  pure  literature,  however,  it  has 
no  great  importance. 

Further  still  from  unmixed  literature  seems  the  work  of  the 
two  men  of  this  period  who  for  general  reasons  now  deserve 
such  separate  consideration  as  we  gave  Cotton  Mather.  They 
deserve  it  as  representing  two  distinct  aspects  of  American 
character,  which  closely  correspond  with  the  two  ideals  most 
inseparable  from  our  native  language.  One  of  these  ideals 
is  the  religious  or  moral,  inherent  in  the  lasting  tradition  of 
the  English  Bible;  the  other  is  the  political  or  social,  equally 
inherent  in  the  equally  lasting  tradition  of  the  English  Law. 
In  the  pre-revolutionary  years  of  our  eighteenth  century,  the 
former  was  most  characteristically  expressed  by  Jonathan 
Edwards  ;  and  the  kind  of  national  temper  which  must  always 
underlie  the  latter  was  incarnate  in  Benjamin  Franklin.  Before 
considering  the  Revolution  and  the  literature  which  came  with 
it  and  after  it,  we  may  best  attend  to  these  men  in  turn. 


JONATHAN    EDWARDS 

JONATHAN  EDWARDS,  son  of  a  minister  who  had  been  educated 
at  Harvard,  was  born  at  East  Windsor,  Connecticut,  on  Octo 
ber  5,  1703.  In  1720  he  took  his  degree  at  Yale,  where  he 
was  a  tutor  from  1724  to  1726.  In  1727  he  was  ordained 
colleague  to  his  grandfather,  Solomon  Stoddard,  minister  of 
Northampton,  Massachusetts.  Here  he  remained  settled  un 
til  1750,  when  his  growing  austerities  resulted  in  his  dismissal 
from  that  ministry.  The  next  year  he  became  a  missionary 
to  the  Stockbridge  Indians,  in  a  region  at  that  time  remote 
from  civilisation.  In  1757  he  was  chosen  to  succeed  his 
son-in-law,  Burr,  as  President  of  Princeton  College.  He 
died  at  Princeton,  in  consequence  of  inoculation  for  small 
pox,  on  March  22,  1758. 

Beyond  doubt,  Edwards  has  had  more  influence  on  subse 
quent  thought  than  any  other  American  theologian.  In  view 
of  this,  the  uneventfulness  of  his  life,  so  utterly  apart  from 
public  affairs,  becomes  significant  of  the  condition  ,of  the  New 
England  ministry  during  his  lifetime.  He  was  born  hardly 
two  years  after  Increase  Mather,  the  lifelong  champion  of 
theocracy,  was  deposed  from  the  presidency  of  Harvard  Col 
lege  ;  and  as  our  glance  at  the  Mathers  must  have  reminded 
uss  an  eminent  Yankee  minister  of  the  seventeenth  century 
was  almost  as  necessarily  a  politician  as  he  was  a  divine.  Yet 
Edwards,  the  most  eminent  of  our  eighteenth-century  minis 
ters,  had  less  to  do  with  public  affairs  than  many  ministers  of 
the  present  day.  A  more  thorough  divorce  of  church  and 
state  than  is  indicated  by  his  career  could  hardly  exist. 


84  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

Nothing  less  than  such  separation  from  public  affairs  could 
have  permitted  that  concentration  on  matters  of  the  other 
world  which  makes  the  work  of  Edwards  still  potent.  From 
his  own  time  to  ours  his  influence  has  been  so  strong  that 
almost  all  discussions  of  him  are  concerned  with  the  question 
of  how  far  his  systematic  theology  is  true.  For  our  purposes 
this  question  is  not  material,  nor  yet  is  that  of  what  his  system 
was  in  detail.  It  is  enough  to  observe  that  throughout  his 
career,  as  preacher  and  writer  alike,  he  set  forth  Calvinism 
in  its  most  uncompromising  form,  reasoned  out  with  great 
logical  power  to  extreme  conclusions.  As  for  matters  of 
earthly  fact,  he  mentioned  them  only  as  they  bore  on  his 
theological  or  philosophical  contentions. 

Early  in  life,  for  example,  he  fell  in  love  with  Sarah  Pierre- 
pont,  daughter  of  a  New  Haven  minister,  and  a  descendant 
of  the  great  emigrant  minister  Thomas  Hooker,  of  Hartford. 
Accordingly  this  lady  presented  herself  to  his  mind  as  surely 
among  God's  elect,  an  opinion  which  he  recorded  when  she 
was  thirteen  years  old  and  he  was  twenty,  in  the  following 
words  :  — 

"  They  say  there  is  a  young  lady  in  New  Haven  who  is  beloved  of 
that  great  Being  who  made  and  rules  the  world,  and  that  there  are 
certain  seasons  in  which  this  great  Being,  in  some  way  or  other  in 
visible,  comes  to  her  and  fills  her  mind  with  exceeding  sweet  delight, 
and  that  she  hardly  cares  for  anything  except  to  meditate  on  Him  ; 
that  she  expects  after  a  while  to  be  received  up  where  he  is,  to  be 
raised  up  out  of  the  world  and  caught  up  into  heaven ;  being  assured 
that  he  loves  her  too  well  to  let  her  remain  at  a  distance  from  Him 
always.  There  she  is  to  dwell  with  Him,  and  to  be  ravished  with  His 
love  and  delight  for  ever.  Therefore,  if  you  present  all  the  world  be 
fore  her,  with  the  richest  of  its  treasures  she  disregards  and  cares  not 
for  it,  and  is  unmindful  of  any  pain  or  affliction.  She  has  a  strange 
sweetness  in  her  mind,  and  singular  purity  in  her  affections ;  is  most 
just  and  conscientious  in  all  her  conduct ;  and  you  could  not  persuade 
her  to  do  anything  wrong  or  sinful,  if  you  would  give  her  the  whole 
world,  lest  she  should  offend  this  great  Being.  She  is  of  a  wonderful 
calmness,  and  universal  benevolence  of  mind;  especially  after  this 
great  God  has  manifested  himself  to  her  mind.  She  will  sometimes 
go  about  from  place  to  place  singing  sweetly ;  and  seems  to  be  always 


70XATHAX  EDWARDS  85 

full  of  joy  and  pleasure,  and  no  one  knows  for  what.  She  loves  to  be 
alone,  walking  in  the  fields  and  groves,  and  seems  to  have  some  one 
invisible  always  conversing  with  her." 

The  spiritual  gifts  of  this  chosen  vessel  of  the  Lord,  who 
in  1727  became  Mrs.  Edwards,  in  no  way  interfered  with 
her  attention  to  human  duties.  During  the  twenty-three 
years  of  her  husband's  ministry  at  Northampton  she  bore  him 
eleven  children,  one  of  whom  married  the  Reverend  Aaron 
Burr,  first  President  of  Princeton  College,  and  became  the 
mother  of  that  other  Aaron  Burr  whose  political  and  social 
career  was  among  the  most  scandalous  of  our  opening  nine 
teenth  century. 

That  little  record  of  Edwards's  innocent  love,  which  felt 
sure  that  its  object  enjoyed  the  blessings  of  God's  elect,  has  a 
certain  charm.  What  tradition  has  mostly  remembered  of 
him,  however,  is  rather  the  unflinching  vigour  with  which  he 
set  forth  the  inevitable  fate  of  fallen  man.  His  most  familiar 
work  is  the  sermon  on  "  Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry 
God,"  of  which  one  cf  the  least  forgotten  passages  runs 
thus : — 

"O  sinner!  consider  the  fearful  danger  you  are  in:  it  is  a  great 
furnace  of  wrath,  a  wide  and  bottomless  pit,  full  of  the  fire  of  wrath, 
that  you  are  held  over  in  the  hand  of  that  God,  whose  wrath  is  pro 
voked  and  incensed  as  much  against  you,  as  against  many  of  the 
damned  in  hell :  —  you  hang  by  a  slender  thread,  with  the  flames  of 
divine  wrath  flashing  about  it,  and  ready  every  moment  to  singe  it 
and  burn  it  asunder;  and  you  have  no  interest  in  any  Mediator,  and 
nothing  to  lay  hold  of  to  save  yourself,  nothing  to  keep  off  the  flames 
of  wrath,  nothing  of  your  own.  nothing  that  you  ever  have  done,  noth 
ing  that  you  can  do,  to  induce  God  to  spare  you  one  moment.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  everlasting  wrath.  It  would  be  dreadful  to  suffer  this  fierce 
ness  and  wrath  of  Almighty  God  one  moment;  but  you  must  suffer  it 
to  all  eternity:  there  will  be  no  end  to  this  exquisite,  horrible  miser}- : 
when  you  look  forward  you  shall  see  a  long  for  ever,  a  boundless  dura 
tion  before  you,  which  will  swallow  up  your  thoughts  and  amaze  your 
soul;  and  you  will  absolutely  despair  of  ever  having  any  deliverance, 
any  end,  any  mitigation,  any  rest  at  all;  you  will  know  certainly  that 
you  must  wear  out  long  ages,  millions  of  millions  of  ages,  in  wrestling 
and  conflicting  with  this  Almighty  merciless  vengeance;  and  then, 


86  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

when  you  have  so  done,  when  so  many  ages  have  actually  been  spent 
by  you  in  this  manner,  you  will  know  that  all  is  but  a  point  to  what 
remains." 

In  view  of  such  doctrine  as  this,  his  last  sermon  to  the 
church  of  Northampton,  delivered  on  June  22,  1750,  be 
comes  very  grim.  His  final  trouble  with  his  parishioners 
arose  from  a  decay  in  church  discipline  which  by  that  time 
had  grown  conspicuous.  In  the  New  England  churches  there 
had  early  arisen  something  called  the  Half  Way  Covenant, 
by  which  those  who  had  received  baptism  in  infancy  might  in 
turn  present  their  own  children  for  baptism.  At  first,  how 
ever,  no  one  was  admitted  either  to  the  Lord's  Supper  or  to 
the  voting  privileges  of  a  church  without  performing  some 
personal  act  of  public  consecration.  As  time  went  on,  and 
discipline  relaxed,  many  ministers,  among  them  Edwards's 
grandfather  Stoddard,  began  to  administer  the  communion  to 
those  who  were  consecrated  to  the  Lord  by  the  Half  Way 
Covenant  only.  The  chief  ground  of  Edwards's  dispute  with 
his  congregation  was  his  refusal  of  the  sacrament  to  persons 
who  had  not  formally  joined  the  church.  And  here  are  some 
of  the  words  in  which  he  bade  his  flock  farewell :  — 

"  My  work  is  finished  which  I  had  to  do  as  a  minister:  You  have 
publicly  rejected  me,  and  my  opportunities  cease. 

**  How  highly  therefore  does  it  now  become  us,  to  consider  of  that 
time  when  we  must  meet  one  another  before  the  chief  Shepherd? 
When  I  must  give  an  account  of  my  stewardship,  of  the  service  I  have 
done  for,  and  the  reception  and  treatment  I  have  had  among  the 
people  he  sent  me  to :  And  you  must  give  an  account  of  your  conduct 
toward  me,  and  the  improvement  you  have  made  of  these  three  and 
twenty  years  of  my  ministry.  There  is  nothing  covered  that  shall  not 
be  revealed,  nor  hid  which  shall  not  be  known;  all  will  be  examined 
in  the  searching,  penetrating  light  of  God's  omniscience  and  glory,  and 
by  him  whose  eyes  are  as  a  flame  of  fire;  and  truth  and  right  shall  be 
made  plainly  to  appear,  being  stripped  of  every  veil ;  and  all  error, 
falsehood,  unrighteousness  and  injury  shall  be  laid  open,  stripped  of 
every  disguise;  every  specious  pretense,  every  cavil,  and  all  false 
reasoning  shall  vanish  in  a  moment,  as  not  being  able  to  bear  the 
light  of  that  day.  .  .  .  Then  every  step  of  the  conduct  of  each  of  us  in 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  87 

this  affair,  from  first  to  last,  and  the  spirit  we  have  exercised  in  all 
shall  be  examined  and  manifested,  and  our  own  consciences  shall  speak 
plain  and  loud,  and  each  of  us  shall  be  convinced,  and  the  world  shall 
know  ;  and  never  shall  there  be  any  more  mistake,  misrepresentation, 
or  misapprehension  of  the  affair  to  eternity." 

This  unflinching  insistence  on  sin  and  its  penalty  has 
impressed  people  so  deeply  that  they  have  been  apt  to  hold 
it  comprehensive  of  Edwards's  theological  system.  Really  this 
is  far  from  the  case.  He  stoutly  defended  the  divine  justice 
of  his  pitiless  doctrine,  to  be  sure,  with  characteristically 
impregnable  logic  :  — 

"  God  is  a  being  infinitely  lovely,  because  he  hath  infinite  excellency 
and  beauty.  To  have  infinite  excellency  and  beauty,  is  the  same  thing 
as  to  have  infinite  loveliness.  He  is  a  being  of  infinite  greatness,  maj 
esty,  and  glory ;  and  therefore  he  is  infinitely  honourable.  He  is  infi 
nitely  exalted  above  the  greatest  potentates  of  the  earth,  and  highest 
angels  in  heaven;  and  therefore  is  infinitely  more  honourable  than 
they.  His  authority  over  us  is  infinite;  and  the  ground  of  his  right 
to  our  obedience  is  infinitely  strong;  for  he  is  infinitely  worthy  to  be 
obeyed  in  himself,  and  we  have  an  absolute,  universal,  and  infinite 
dependence  upon  him. 

"  So  that  sin  against  God,  being  a  violation  of  infinite  obligations, 
must  be  a  crime  infinitely  heinous,  and  so  deserving  of  infinite  pun 
ishment." 

Yet  in  spite  of  all  this,  he  held,  God  now  and  again  shows 
unmerited  mercy,  which  may  by  chance  be  granted  to  any  one 
of  us.  We  have  seen  already  how  surely  he  believed  this 
vouchsafed  to  the  lady  who  became  his  wife.  Here  is  another 
of  his  infrequent  statements  of  fact,  recording  how  divine  grace 
came  to  one  Phebe  Bartlet,  a  child  of  Northampton,  born  in 
March,  1731  :  — 

"  On  Thursday,  the  last  day  of  July  (1735),  tne  child  being  in  the 
closet,  where  it  used  to  retire,  its  mother  heard  it  speaking  aloud, 
which  was  unusual,  and  never  had  been  observed  before ;  and  her 
voice  seemed  to  be  as  of  one  exceeding  importunate  and  engaged,  but 
her  mother  could  distinctly  hear  only  these  words,  (spoken  in  her 
childish  manner,  but  seemed  to  be  spoken  with  extraordinary  earnest 
ness,  and  out  of  distress  of  soul)  Pray  Bessed  Lord  give  me  salvation  ! 
1  pray,  beg  pardon  all  my  sins  1  When  the  child  had  done  prayer,  she 


88  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

came  out  of  the  closet,  and  came  and  sat  down  by  her  mother,  and 
cried  out  aloud.  Her  mother  very  earnestly  asked  her  several  times, 
what  the  matter  was,  before  she  would  make  any  answer,  but  she  con 
tinued  exceeding  crying,  and  wreathing  her  body  to  and  fro,  like  one 
in  anguish  of  spirit.  Her  mother  then  asked  her  whether  she  was 
afraid  that  God  would  not  give  her  salvation.  She  then  answered  yes, 
I  am  afraid  I  shall  go  to  hell !  Her  mother  then  endeavoured  to  quiet 
her,  and  told  her  that  she  would  not  have  her  cry  .  .  .  she  must  be  a 
very  good  girl,  and  pray  every  day,  and  she  hoped  God  would  give 
her  salvation.  But  this  did  not  quiet  her  at  all  ...  but  she  continued 
thus  earnestly  crying  and  taking  on  for  some  time,  till  at  length  she 
suddenly  ceased  crying  and  began  to  smile,  and  presently  said  with  a 
smiling  countenance.  .  .  .  Mother  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  come  to 
me  !  Her  mother  was  surprised  at  the  sudden  alteration,  and  at  the 
speech,  and  knew  not  what  to  make  of  it,  but  at  first  said  nothing  to 
her.  The  child  presently  spake  again,  and  said,  there  is  another  come 
to  me,  and  there  is  another  .  .  .  there  is  three;  and  being  asked  what 
she  meant,  she  answered  .  .  .  One  is,  thy  will  be  done,  and  there  is 
another  .  .  .  enjoy  him  forever;  by  which  it  seems  that  when  the  child 
said,  there  is  three  come  to  me,  she  meant  three  passages  of  its  cate 
chism  that  came  to  her  mind." 

Hideous  as  this  picture  of  Puritan  infancy  must  seem  in 
certain  moods,  there  are  others,  and  moods  which  to  Edwards 
would  have  seemed  much  more  rational,  in  which  it  takes  on 
an  aspect  of  ecstatic  beauty.  According  to  the  system  from 
which  he  never  wavered,  the  misery  and  the  subsequent  joy 
of  this  little  child  meant  that,  for  no  merit  of  her  own,  God 
had  been  mercifully  pleased  to  receive  her  into  the  fellowship 
of  the  saints,  wherein  she  was  destined  to  enjoy  for  ever  such 
peace  as  his  own  words  shall  describe  :  — 

"The  peace  of  the  Christian  infinitely  differs  from  that  of  the 
worldling,  in  that  it  is  unfailing  and  eternal  peace.  That  peace  which 
carnal  men  have  in  the  things  of  this  world  is,  according  to  the  found 
ation  it  is  built  upon,  of  short  continuance ;  like  the  comfort  of  a 
dream,  I  John  ii.  17,  i  Cor.  vii.  31.  These  things,  the  best  and  most 
durable  of  them,  are  like  bubbles  on  the  face  of  the  water;  they 
vanish  in  a  moment,  Hos.  x.  7. 

"  But  the  foundation  of  the  Christian's  peace  is  everlasting;  it  is 
what  no  time,  no  change,  can  destroy.  It  will  remain  when  the  body 
dies ;  it  will  remain  when  the  mountains  depart  and  the  hills  shall  be 
removed,  and  when  the  heavens  shall  be  rolled  together  as  a  scroll. 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  89 

The  fountain  of  his  comfort  shall  never  be  diminished,  and  the  stream 
shall  never  be  dried.  His  comfort  and  joy  is  a  living  spring  in  the 
soul,  a  well  of  water  springing  up  to  everlasting  life." 

In  plain  truth,  what  people  commonly  remember  of  Edwards 
is  merely  one  extreme  to  which  he  reasoned  out  his  consistent 
system.  Like  the  older  theology  of  Calvin  and  of  Augustine, 
it  all  rests  on  the  essential  wickedness  of  the  human  will, 
concerning  which  Edwards's  great  treatise  is  still  held  a  strong 
bit  of  philosophising.  He  asserts  something  like  an  utter 
fatalism,  a  universality  of  cause  affecting  even  our  volition, 
quite  beyond  human  control.  This  fatal  perversion  of  human 
will  he  believes  to  spring  from  that  ancestral  curse  which  for 
bids  any  child  of  Adam  to  exert  the  will  in  true  harmony  with 
the  will  of  God.  Reconciliation  he  holds  possible  only  when 
superhuman  power  comes,  with  unmerited  grace,  to  God's 
elect. 

Once  accept  Edwards's  premises,  and  you  will  be  at  pains 
to  avoid  his  conclusions.  Yet  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  long  ago  American  posterity  has  generally  rejected  both, 
more  absolutely  indeed  than  it  may  come  to  reject  them  in 
the  future.  One  can  see  why.  In  his  American  world,  so 
relieved  from  the  pressure  of  external  fact  that  people  gener 
ally  behaved  much  better  than  is  usual  in  earthly  history, 
Edwards,  whose  personal  life  was  exceptionally  removed  from 
anything  practical,  reasoned  out  with  unflinching  logic,  to 
extreme  conclusions,  a  kind  of  philosophy  which  is  justified  in 
experience  only  by  such  things  as  occur  in  densely  populated, 
corrupt  societies.  Augustine  wrote  amid  the  corruption  of 
decadent  Rome,  whose  ruined  amphitheatres  still  testify  to 
the  brutish  riots  of  pleasure  which  could  subsist  amid  what 
seemed  civilisation,  and  whose  fashionable  vices  had  run  in 
men  and  women  alike  to  more  than  Neronic  excess.  Calvin 
reiterated  this  theology  in  a  Europe  where  the  most  potent 
family  was  the  Medici,  the  Florentine  race  whose  blood  com 
bined  with  that  of  degenerate  Stuarts  to  complete  the  degra- 


90  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

dation  of  royalty  in  Charles  II.,  and  James,  and  the  Pretenders. 
And,  a  century  and  more  later,  this  Jonathan  Edwards  tried 
logically  to  extend  Calvinism  in  a  world  where  there  were  few 
more  dreadful  exhibitions  of  human  depravity  than  occasional 
cheating,  the  reading  of  eighteenth-century  novels,  —  which 
Edwards  is  said  to  have  held  dangerously  obscene,  —  and  such 
artless  merry-making  and  moonlight  flirtation  as  have  always 
gladdened  youth  in  the  Yankee  country.  Whoever  knew 
American  life  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  and 
honestly  asked  himself  whether  its  manifestations  were  such 
as  the  theology  of  Edwards  would  explain,  could  hardly  avoid 
a  deeper  and  deeper  conviction  that  even  though  he  was  tra 
ditionally  accustomed  to  accept  the  premises  which  so  clearly 
involved  Edwards's  conclusions,  somehow  these  conclusions 
were  not  so. 

By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  in  short,  reli 
gious  thought  in  America  had  divorced  itself  from  life  almost 
as  completely  as  from  politics.  The  slow  result  was  certain. 
In  1857,  nearty  a  hundred  years  after  the  death  of  Edwards, 
the  most  familiar  and  unanswerable  comment  on  his  system 
appeared.  Often  misunderstood,  generally  thought  no  more 
than  a  piece  of  comic  extravagance,  Dr.  Holmes's  "  One- 
Hoss  Shay  "  is  really  among  the  most  pitiless  satires  in  our 
language.  Born  and  bred  a  Calvinist,  Holmes,  who  lived 
m  the  full  tide  of  Unitarian  hopefulness,  recoiled  from  the 
appalling  doctrines  which  had  darkened  his  youth.  He  could 
find  no  flaw  in  their  reasoning,  but  he  would  not  accept  their 
conclusions.  In  a  spirit  as  earnest,  then,  as  his  words  seem 
rollicking,  he  wrote  of  Edwards  thus  :  — 


"  Little  of  all  we  value  here 
Wakes  on  the  morn  of  its  hundredth  year 
Without  both  feeling  and  looking  queer. 
In  fact,  there  *s  nothing  that  keeps  its  youth, 


So  far  as  I  know,  but  a  tree  and  truth. 

(This  is  a  moral  that  runs  at  large  ; 

Take  it.  —  You  're  welcome.  —  No  extra  charge.) 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  9i 

"FIRST   OF    NOVEMBER,  — the  Earthquake-day,— 
There  are  traces  of  age  in  the  one-hoss  shay, 
A  general  flavour  of  mild  decay, 
But  nothing  local  as  one  may  say. 
There  could  n't  be,  —  for  the  Deacon's  art 
Had  made  it  so  like  in  every  part 
That  there  was  n't  a  chance  for  one  to  start. 
For  the  wheels  were  just  as  strong  as  the  thills, 
And  the  floor  was  just  as  strong  as  the  sills, 
And  the  panels  just  as  strong  as  the  floor, 
And  the  whipple-tree  neither  less  nor  more, 
And  the  back-crossbar  as  strong  as  the  fore, 
And  spring  and  axle  and  hub  encore. 
And  yet,  as  a  whole,  it  is  past  a  doubt 
In  another  hour  it  will  be  worn  out! 

"  First  of  November,  'Fifty-five ! 
This  morning  the  parson  takes  a  drive. 
Now,  small  boys,  get  out  of  the  way ! 
Here  comes  the  wonderful  one-hoss  shay, 
Drawn  by  a  rat-tailed,  ewe-necked  bay. 
1  Huddup ! '  said  the  parson.  —  Off  went  they. 
The  parson  was  working  his  Sunday's  text,  — 
Had  got  to  fifthly,  and  stopped  perplexed 
At  what  the  —  Moses  —  was  coming  next. 
All  at  once  the  horse  stood  still, 
Close  by  the  meet'n'-house  on  the  hill. 
First  a  shiver,  and  then  a  thrill, 
Then  something  decidedly  like  a  spill,  — 
And  the  parson  was  sitting  upon  a  rock, 
At  half  past  nine  by  the  meet'n'-house  clock,  — 
Just  the  hour  of  the  Earthquake  shock  ! 
What  do  you  think  the  parson  found, 
When  he  got  up  and  stared  around  ? 
The  poor  old  chaise  in  a  heap  or  mound, 
As  if  it  had  been  to  the  mill  and  ground ! 
You  see,  of  course,  if  you  Jre  not  a  dunce, 
How  it  went  to  pieces  all  at  once,  — 
All  at  once,  and  nothing  first,  — 
Just  as  bubbles  do  when  they  burst 

"  End  of  the  wonderful  one-hoss  shay. 
Logic  is  logic.     That 's  all  I  say." 


VI 

BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN 

THE  contemporary  of  Edwards  who  best  shows  what  Ameri 
can  human  nature  had  become,  is  Benjamin  Franklin.  Unlike 
the  persons  at  whom  we  have  glanced,  this  man,  who  before 
he  died  became  more  eminent  than  all  the  rest  together,  sprang 
from  socially  inconspicuous  origin.  The  son  of  a  tallow 
chandler,  he  was  born  in  Boston,  on  January  6,  1706.  As 
a  mere  boy,  he  was  apprenticed  to  his  brother,  a  printer,  with 
whom  he  did  not  get  along  very  well.  At  seventeen  he  ran 
away,  and  finally  turned  up  in  Philadelphia,  where  he  attracted 
the  interest  of  some  influential  people.  A  year  later  he  went 
to  England,  carrying  from  these  friends  letters  which  he  sup 
posed  might  be  useful  in  the  mother  country.  The  letters 
proved  worthless  ;  in  1726,  after  a  life  in  England  for  which 
vagabond  is  hardly  too  strong  a  word,  he  returned  to  Phila 
delphia.  There  he  remained  for  some  thirty  years.  He  be 
gan  by  shrewdly  advancing  himself  as  printer,  publisher,  and 
shopkeeper ;  later,  when  his  extraordinary  ability  had  drawn 
about  him  people  of  more  and  more  solid  character,  he  became 
a  local  public  man  and  proved  himself  also  an  admirable  self- 
taught  man  of  science.  About  the  time  of  Washington's  birth, 
he  started  that  "  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  "  whose  aphorisms 
have  had  such  lasting  vogue.  It  is  Poor  Richard  who  told 
us,  among  other  things,  that  u  Early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise, 
makes  a  man  healthy,  wealthy,  and  wise ;  "  that  "  God  helps 
them  that  help  themselves ; "  and  that  "  Honesty  is  the  best 
policy."  After  fifteen  years  Franklin's  affairs  had  so  pros 
pered  that  he  could  retire  from  shopkeeping  and  give  himself 
over  to  scientific  work.  He  made  numerous  inventions :  the 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  93 

lightning-rod,  for  example ;  the  stove  still  called  by  his  name ; 
and  double  spectacles,  with  one  lens  in  the  upper  half  for  observ 
ing  distant  objects,  and  another  in  the  lower  half  for  reading. 
In  1755  he  was  made  Postmaster-General  of  the  American 
colonies ;  and  the  United  States  post-office  is  said  still  to  be 
conducted  in  many  respects  on  the  system  he  then  established. 
So  he  lived  until  1757,  the  year  before  Jonathan  Edwards 
died. 

In  1757  he  was  sent  to  England  as  the  Agent  of  Pennsyl 
vania.  There  he  remained,  with  slight  intervals,  for  eight 
een  years,  becoming  agent  of  other  colonies  too.  In  1775 
he  returned  home,  where  in  1776  he  was  a  signer  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  Before  the  end  of  that  year 
he  was  despatched  as  minister  to  France,  where  he  remained 
until  1785.  Then  he  came  home  and  was  elected  President 
of  Pennsylvania.  In  1787  he  was  among  the  signers  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.  On  the  I7th  of  April, 
1790,  he  died  at  Philadelphia,  a  city  to  which  his  influence 
had  given  not  only  the  best  municipal  system  of  eighteenth- 
century  America,  but  also,  among  other  institutions  which 
have  survived,  the  American  Philosophical  Society  and  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania. 

The  Franklin  of  world  tradition,  the  great  Franklin,  is  the 
statesman  and  diplomatist  who  from  1757  until  1785  proved 
himself  both  in  England  and  in  France  to  possess  such  com 
manding  power.  But  the  Franklin  with  whom  we  are  con 
cerned  is  rather  the  shrewd  native  American  whose  first  fifty 
years  were  spent  in  preparation  for  his  world-wide  career. 
He  was  born,  we  have  seen,  a  Yankee  of  the  lower  class, 
not  technically  a  gentleman.  How  significant  this  fact  was 
in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  may  be  seen  by  a 
glance  at  any  Quinquennial  Catalogue  of  Harvard  College. 
In  this,  from  the  beginning  until  1772,  the  names  of  the 
graduates  are  arranged  not  in  alphabetical  order,  but  in  that  of 
social  precedence.  The  sons  of  royal  governors  and  of  king's 


94  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

counsellors  come  first,  then  sons  of  ministers  and  magistrates, 
and  so  on ;  and  the  records  of  the  College  show  that  an 
habitual  form  of  discipline  during  this  period  was  to  put  a 
man's  name  in  his  class-list  beneath  the  place  to  which  his 
birth  entitled  him.  To  spirited  American  youths  social  in 
feriority  is  galling ;  the  effect  of  it  on  Franklin's  career  ap 
peared  in  several  ways.  For  one  thing  he  always  hated 
Harvard  College,  and  had  small  love  for  anything  in  Massa 
chusetts  ;  for  another,  he  instinctively  emigrated  to  a  region 
where  he  should  not  be  hampered  by  troublesome  family 
traditions ;  for  a  third,  with  the  recklessness  which  is  apt  to 
endanger  youth  in  such  a  situation,  he  consorted  during  his 
earlier  life  with  men  who  though  often  clever  were  loose  in 
morals.  Before  middle  life,  however,  his  vagabond  period 
was  at  an  end.  By  strict  attention  to  business  and  imper 
turbable  good  sense,  he  steadily  outgrew  his  origin.  By  the 
time  he  was  fifty  years  old  his  studies  in  electricity  had  gained 
him  European  reputation ;  and  in  all  the  American  colonies 
there  was  no  practical  public  man  of  more  deserved  local 
importance. 

In  the  course  of  this  career  he  had  written  and  published 
copiously.  None  of  his  work,  however,  can  be  called  exactly 
literary.  Its  purpose  was  either  to  instruct  people  concerning 
his  scientific  and  other  discoveries  and  principles ;  or  else,  as 
in  "  Poor  Richard's  Almanac,"  —  perhaps  his  nearest  ap 
proach  to  pure  letters,  — to  influence  conduct.  But  if  Frank 
lin's  writings  were  never  precisely  literature,  his  style  was 
generally  admirable.  His  account  in  the  "  Autobiography  " 
of  how,  while  still  a  Boston  boy,  he  learned  to  write,  is  at 
once  characteristic  of  his  temper  and  conclusive  of  his  accom 
plishment  :  — 

"  About  this  time  I  met  with  an  odd  volume  of  the  '  Spectator.' 
It  was  the  third.  I  had  never  before  seen  any  of  them.  I  bought  it, 
read  it  over  and  over,  and  was  much  delighted  with  it.  I  thought  the 
writing  excellent,  and  wished,  if  possible,  to  imitate  it.  With  this 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  95 

view  I  took  some  of  the  papers,  and,  making  short  hints  of  the  senti 
ment  in  each  sentence,  laid  them  by  a  few  days,  and  then,  without 
looking  at  the  book,  try'd  to  compleat  the  papers  again,  by  expressing 
each  hinted  sentiment  at  length,  and  as  fully  as  it  had  been  expressed 
before,  in  any  suitable  words  that  should  come  to  hand.  Then  I 
compared  my  '  Spectator '  with  the  original,  discovered  some  of  my 
faults,  and  corrected  them.  But  I  found  I  wanted  a  stock  of  words, 
or  a  readiness  in  recollecting  and  using  them,  which  I  thought  I 
should  have  acquired  before  that  time  if  I  had  gone  on  making 
verses ;  since  the  continual  occasion  for  words  of  the  same  import, 
but  of  different  length,  to  suit  the  measure,  or  of  different  sound  for 
the  rhyme,  would  have  laid  me  under  a  constant  necessity  of  search 
ing  for  variety,  and  also  have  tended  to  fix  that  variety  in  my  mind, 
and  make  me  master  of  it.  Therefore  I  took  some  of  the  tales  and 
turned  them  into  verse;  and,  after  a  time,  when  I  had  pretty  well  for 
gotten  the  prose,  turned  them  back  again.  I  also  sometimes  jumbled 
my  collection  of  hints  into  confusion,  and  after  some  weeks  endeav 
oured  to  reduce  them  into  the  best  order,  before  I  began  to  form  the 
full  sentences  and  compleat  the  paper.  This  was  to  teach  me  method 
in  the  arrangement  of  thoughts.  My  time  for  these  exercises  and  for 
reading  was  at  night,  after  work  or  before  it  began  in  the  morning,  or 
on  Sundays,  when  I  contrived  to  be  in  the  printing-house  alone,  evad' 
ing  as  much  as  I  could  the  common  attendance  on  public  worship 
which  my  father  used  to  exact  of  me  when  I  was  under  his  care,  and 
which  indeed  I  still  thought  a  duty,  though  I  could  not,  as  it  seemed 
to  me,  afford  time  to  practice  it." 

Sound  eighteenth-century  English  this,  though  hardly  of 
Addisonian  urbanity.  Even  more  characteristic  than  the 
English  of  this  passage,  however,  is  Franklin's  feeling  about 
religion,  implied  in  its  last  sentence.  The  Boston  where  this 
printer's  boy  stayed  away  from  church  to  teach  himself  how  to 
write  was  the  very  town  where  Increase  and  Cotton  Mather 
were  still  preaching  the  dogmas  of  Puritan  theocracy  ;  and  a 
few  days' journey  westward  Jonathan  Edwards,  only  three  years 
older  than  Franklin,  was  beginning  his  lifelong  study  of  the 
relation  of  mankind  to  eternity.  To  the  religious  mind  of 
New  England,  earthly  life  remained  a  mere  fleeting  moment. 
Life  must  always  end  soon,  and  death  as  we  see  it  actually 
seems  unending.  With  this  solemn  truth  constantly  in  mind, 
the  New  England  Puritans  of  Franklin's  day,  like  their  devout 


96  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

ancestors,  and  many  of  their  devout  descendants,  bent  their 
whole  energy  toward  eternal  welfare  as  distinguished  from 
anything  temporal.  Yet  in  their  principal  town  Franklin,  a 
man  of  the  plain  people,  exposed  to  no  influences  but  those  of 
his  own  day  and  country,  was  coolly  preferring  the  study  of 
earthly  accomplishment  to  any  question  which  concerned  mat 
ters  beyond  human  life. 

Another  extract  from  his  "  Autobiography "  carries  his 
religious  history  a  little  further  :  — 

"  My  parents  had  early  given  me  religious  impressions,  and  brought 
me  through  my  childhood  piously  in  the  Dissenting  way.  But  I  was 
scarce  fifteen,  when,  after  doubting  by  turns  of  several  points,  as  I 
found  them  disputed  in  the  different  books  I  read,  I  began  to  doubt  of 
Revelation  itself.  Some  books  against  Deism  fell  into  my  hands ; 
they  were  said  to  be  the  substance  of  sermons  preached  at  Boyle's 
Lectures.  It  happened  that  they  wrought  an  effect  on  me  quite  con 
trary  to  what  was  intended  by  them  ;  for  the  arguments  of  the  deists, 
which  were  quoted  to  be  refuted,  appeared  to  me  much  stronger  than 
the  refutations ;  in  short,  I  soon  became  a  thorough  Deist.  My  argu 
ments  perverted  some  others,  particularly  Collins  and  Ralph ;  but,  each 
of  them  having  afterwards  wrong'd  me  greatly  without  the  least  com 
punction,  and  recollecting  Keith's  conduct  towards  me  (who  was 
another  free-thinker),  and  my  own  towards  Vernon  and  Miss  Read, 
which  at  times  gave  me  great  trouble,  I  began  to  suspect  that  this 
doctrine,  tho'  it  might  be  true,  was  not  very  useful." 

"  Not  very  useful : "  the  good  sense  of  Franklin  tested 
religion  itself  by  its  effects  on  every-day  conduct. 

Later  still  in  his  "  Autobiography  "  he  tells  how  he  was 
impressed  by  the  ministrations  of  the  only  Presbyterian  minis 
ter  in  Philadelphia,  to  whose  services  he  paid  the  willing  tribute 
of  annual  subscription  :  — 

"  He  used  to  visit  me  sometimes  as  a  friend,  and  admonish  me  to  at 
tend  his  administrations,  and  I  was  now  and  then  prevailed  on  to  do 
so,  once  for  five  Sundays  successively.  Had  he  been  in  my  opinion  a 
good  preacher,  perhaps  I  might  have  continued,  notwithstanding  the 
occasion  I  had  for  the  Sunday's  leisure  in  my  course  of  study ;  but 
his  discourses  were  chiefly  either  polemic  arguments,  or  explications 
of  the  peculiar  doctrines  of  our  sect,  and  were  all  to  me  very  dry,  un- 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  97 

interesting,  and  unedifying,  since  not  a  single  moral  principle  was  in 
culcated  or  enforced,  their  aim  seeming  rather  to  make  us  Presbyteri 
ans  than  good  citizens." 

The  spiritual  life  thus  begun,  if  spiritual  it  may  be  called, 
developed  as  might  have  been  expected.  Years  afterward,  it 
excited  painful  apprehension  in  the  mind  of  the  great  George 
Whitefield,  to  whom  in  1764  Franklin  wrote  thus:  — 

"  Your  frequently  repeated  wishes  for  my  eternal,  as  well  as  my 
temporal  happiness,  are  very  obliging,  and  I  can  only  thank  you  for 
them  and  offer  you  mine  in  return.  I  have  myself  no  doubt,  that  I 
shall  enjoy  as  much  of  both  as  is  proper  for  me.  That  Being,  who 
gave  me  existence,  and  through  almost  threescore  years  has  been  con 
tinually  showering  his  favours  upon  me ;  whose  very  chastisements 
have  been  blessings  to  me;  can  I  doubt  that  he  loves  me?  And,  if 
he  loves  me,  can  I  doubt  that  he  will  go  on  to  take  care  of  me,  not 
only  here  but  hereafter?  This  to  some  may  seem  presumption ;  to  me 
it  appears  the  best  grounded  hope ;  hope  of  the  future  built  on  experi 
ence  of  the  past." 

The  personal  relations  with  Whitefield  attested  by  this  let 
ter  had  begun  in  1739,  when  the  revivalist  first  came  to  Phila 
delphia.  Here 

"  he  was  at  first  permitted  to  preach  in  some  of  our  churches ;  but 
the  clergy,  taking  a  dislike  to  him,  soon  refused  him  their  pulpits,  and 
he  was  obliged  to  preach  in  the  fields.  The  multitudes  of  all  sects 
and  denominations  that  attended  his  sermons  were  enormous,  and  it 
was  matter  of  speculation  to  me,  who  was  one  of  the  number,  to  ob 
serve  the  extraordinary  influence  of  his  oratory  on  his  hearers,  and 
how  much  they  admired  and  respected  him,  notwithstanding  his  com 
mon  abuse  of  them,  by  assuring  them  they  were  naturally  half  beasts 
and  half  devils.  It  was  wonderful  to  see  the  change  soon  made  in 
the  manner  of  our  inhabitants.  From  being  thoughtless  or  indifferent 
about  religion,  it  seem'd  as  if  all  the  world  were  growing  religious,  so 
that  one  could  not  walk  thro'  the  town  in  an  evening  without  hearing 
psalms  sung  in  different  families  of  every  street." 

Franklin,  who  was  employed  as  printer  on  many  of  White- 
field's  sermons,  soon  came  to  have  a  high  opinion  of  the 
Methodist's  personal  honesty.  Of  his  prudence,  the  shrewd 
Yankee  had  more  doubt ;  but  at  least  once  Whitefield's  preach- 

7 


98  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

ing,  with  its  u  wonderful  power  over  the  hearts  and  the  purses 
of  his  hearers,"  carried  him  away.  The  revivalist  wished  to 
establish  in  Georgia  a  charitable  orphanage,  which  Franklin 
thought  impracticable. 

"  I  therefore  refused  to  contribute,"  writes  Franklin.  "  I  happened 
soon  after  to  attend  one  of  his  sermons,  in  the  course  of  which  I  per 
ceived  he  intended  to  finish  with  a  collection,  and  I  silently  resolved 
he  should  get  nothing  from  me.  I  had  in  my  pocket  a  handful  of 
copper  money,  three  or  four  silver  dollars,  and  five  pistoles  in  gold. 
As  he  proceeded  I  began  to  soften,  and  concluded  to  give  the  coppers. 
Another  stroke  of  his  oratory  made  me  asham'd  of  that,  and  deter 
mined  me  to  give  the  silver ;  and  he  finished  so  admirably,  that  I 
empty'd  my  pocket  wholly  into  the  collector's  dish,  gold  and  all." 

Generally,  however,  Franklin  kept  his  head  better.  The 
cool  scientific  temper  with  which  on  another  occasion  he  at 
tended  to  one  of  Whitefield's  impassioned  public  discourses  is 
more  characteristic  :  — 

"  He  preach'd  one  evening  from  the  top  of  the  Court-house  steps, 
which  are  in  the  middle  of  Market-street,  and  on  the  west  side  of 
Second-street,  which  crosses  it  at  right  angles.  Both  streets  were 
filled  with  hearers  to  a  considerable  distance.  Being  among  the  hind 
most  in  Market-street,  I  had  the  curiosity  to  learn  how  far  he  could 
be  heard,  by  retiring  backwards  down  the  street  towards  the  river; 
and  I  found  that  his  voice  was  distinct  till  I  came  near  Front-street, 
when  some  noise  in  that  street  obscur'd  it.  Imagining  then  a  semi 
circle,  of  which  my  distance  should  be  the  radius,  and  that  it  were 
filled  with  auditors,  to  each  of  whom  I  allowed  two  square  feet,  I  com 
puted  that  he  might  well  be  heard  by  more  than  thirty  thousand. 
This  reconciFd  me  to  the  newspaper  accounts  of  his  having  preached 
to  twenty-five  thousand  people  in  the  fields,  and  to  ancient  histories 
of  generals  haranguing  whole  armies,  of  which  I  had  sometimes 
doubted." 

Far  more  in  this  vein  is  Franklin's  friendly  record  of  their 
personal  relations  :  — 

"The  following  instance  will  show  something  of  the  terms  on  which 
we  stood.  Upon  one  of  his  arrivals  from  England  at  Boston,  he  wrote 
to  me  that  he  should  come  soon  to  Philadelphia,  but  knew  not  where 
he  could  lodge  when  there,  as  he  understood  his  old  friend  and  host, 
Mr.  Benezet,  was  removed  to  Germantown.  My  answer  was,  *  You 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  99 

know  my  house ;  if  you  can  make  shift  with  its  scanty  accommodations, 
you  will  be  most  heartily  welcome.'  He  reply'd,  that  if  I  made  that 
kind  offer  for  Christ's  sake,  I  should  not  miss  of  a  reward.  And  I  re 
turned,  '  Don't  let  me  be  mistaken;  it  was  not  for  Chris  fs  sake,  but  for 
your  sake?  One  of  our  common  acquaintances  jocosely  remark'd  that, 
knowing  it  to  be  the  custom  of  the  saints,  when  they  received  any 
favour,  to  shift  the  burden  of  the  obligation  from  off  their  own 
shoulders,  and  place  it  in  heaven,  I  had  contriv'd  to  fix  it  on  earth." 

To  Franklin,  indeed,  things  on  earth  were  of  paramount 
importance.  He  never  denied  the  existence  of  God,  but  he 
deemed  God  a  beneficent  spirit,  abundantly  able  to  take  care 
of  himself  and  to  take  care  of  us  too  ;  so  long  then,  as  men  be 
have  decently,  they  may  confidently  leave  to  God  the  affairs  of 
heaven  and  of  hell,  if  perchance  there  be  one.  Franklin's 
God,  in  short,  was  much  more  like  that  Supreme  Being  to 
whom  Voltaire  in  his  last  days  erected  a  classical  temple  in 
the  grounds  of  Ferney,  than  like  the  orthodox  God  of  New 
England,  —  Him  whom  in  the  midst  of  Franklin's  lifetime  Jona 
than  Edwards  so  fervently  described  as  holding  sinners  for  a 
moment  above  eternal  fires  into  which  His  angry  hand  should 
presently  drop  them.  Of  earthly  morality,  meanwhile,  so  far 
as  it  commended  itself  to  good  sense,  Franklin  was  shrewdly 
careful.  No  passage  in  his  "  Autobiography  "  is  more  familiar 
than  the  list  of  virtues  which  he  drew  up  and  endeavoured  in 
turn  to  practise.  The  order  in  which  he  chose  to  arrange 
them  is  as  follows :  Temperance,  Silence,  Order,  Resolution, 
Frugality  (under  which  his  little  expository  motto  is  very 
characteristic  :  "  Make  no  expense  but  to  do  good  to  others 
or  yourself"),  Industry,  Sincerity  (under  which  he  directs  us 
to  "  Use  no  hurtful  deceit "),  Justice,  Moderation,  Cleanli 
ness,  Tranquillity,  Chastity,  and  finally  one  which  he  added 
later  as  peculiarly  needful  to  him,  —  Humility.  The  injunction 
placed  under  this  last  is  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  of  all : 
"  Imitate  Jesus  and  Socrates." 

Now  though  all  this  is  sound  practical  morality  of  a  kind 
which  should  at  once  advance  a  man's  earthly  prosperity  and 


ioo  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

incidentally  benefit  society,  it  is  about  as  far  from  the  pas 
sionate  morality  which  should  save  souls  as  it  is  from  vice 
itself.  The  most  familiar  saying  of  Poor  Richard,  "  Honesty 
is  the  best  policy,"  is  typical  of  this.  Very  likely  honesty 
will  bring  you  to  heaven,  but  for  the  moment  that  ques 
tion  is  immaterial ;  if  you  are  honest  in  this  world,  you  will 
get  on  here  better  than  if  you  are  not.  A  profound  truth 
this,  by  the  way,  particularly  for  English-speaking  people. 
Compared  with  races  of  Latin  or  Greek  origin,  ours  is  not 
intellectually  alert.  Now  if  you  act  honestly  and  tell  the 
truth,  you  play  your  part  in  exact  accordance  with  life  as 
you  see  it.  On  the  other  hand,  begin  to  cheat,  to  act  dis 
honestly,  or  to  lie,  and  you  have  set  up  such  contradiction  of 
fact  as  you  must  constantly  support  by  fresh  and  various  mis 
representation.  To  alert-minded  people  a  frequent  demand 
for  mendacious  ingenuity  often  seems  stimulating.  To  peo 
ple  of  our  sluggish  race  it  is  rather  bewildering ;  English- 
speaking  people  are  the  least  successful  liars  in  the  world. 
Very  good :  we  are  of  English  tradition ;  the  part  of  good 
sense,  then,  is  to  lie  as  little  as  possible,  to  "  use  no  hurtful 
deceit,"  to  be  honest.  "  Honesty  is  the  best  policy."  So  far 
as  conduct  goes,  worldly  wisdom  brings  us  nearly  into  accord 
with  the  dogmatic  morality  of  Christianity.  In  other  words, 
such  common  sense  as  Franklin's  ultimately  makes  human 
beings  behave  in  a  manner  so  far  from  superficially  damnable 
that  you  might  be  at  pains  to  distinguish  them  from  God's 
own  elect. 

The  deliberate  good  sense  with  which  Franklin  treated 
matters  of  religion  and  morality,  he  displayed  equally  in  his 
scientific  writings ;  and,  a  little  later,  in  the  public  documents 
and  correspondence  which  made  him  as  eminent  in  diplomacy 
and  statecraft  as  he  had  earlier  been  in  science  and  in  local 
affairs.  His  examination  before  the  House  of  Commons  in 
1766  shows  him  as  a  public  man  at  his  best.  A  letter  to 
a  London  newspaper,  written  the  year  before,  shows  another 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  101 

phase  of  his  mind,  less  frequently  remembered.  It  is  a  ban 
tering  comment  on  ignorant  articles  concerning  the  American 
colonies  which  appeared  at  about  this  time  in  the  daily 
prints :  — 

"  I  beg  leave  to  say,  that  all  the  articles  of  news  that  seem  improba 
ble  are  not  mere  inventions.  The  very  tails  of  the  American  sheep 
are  so  laden  with  wool,  that  each  has  a  little  car  or  wagon  on  four  little 
wheels,  to  support  and  keep  it  from  trailing  on  the  ground.  Would 
they  caulk  their  ships,  would  they  even  litter  their  horses  with  wool, 
if  it  were  not  both  plenty  and  cheap  ?  And  what  signifies  the  dear- 
ness  of  labor  when  an  English  shilling  passes  for  five-and-twenty  ? 
Their  engaging  three  hundred  silk  throwsters  here  in  one  week  for 
New  York  was  treated  as  a  fable,  because,  forsooth,  they  have  'no 
silk  there  to  throw.'  Those,  who  make  this  objection,  perhaps  do  not 
know,  that,  at  the  same  time  the  agents  from  the  King  of  Spain  were 
at  Quebec  to  contract  for  one  thousand  pieces  of  cannon  to  be  made 
there  for  the  fortification  of  Mexico,  and  at  New  York  engaging  the 
usual  supply  of  woollen  floor  carpets  for  their  West  India  houses, 
other  agents  from  the  Emperor  of  China  were  at  Boston  treating 
about  an  exchange  of  raw  silk  for  wool,  to  be  carried  in  Chinese  junks 
through  the  Straits  of  Magellan. 

"And  yet  all  this  is  as  certainly  true,  as  the  account  said  to  be 
from  Quebec,  in  all  the  papers  of  last  week,  that  the  inhabitants  of 
Canada  are  making  preparations  for  a  cod  and  whale  fishery  'this 
summer  in  the  upper  Lakes.'  Ignorant  people  may  object,  that  the 
upper  Lakes  are  fresh,  and  that  cod  and  whales  are  salt  water  fish  ;  but 
let  them  know,  Sir,  that  cod,  like  other  fish  when  attacked  by  their 
enemies,  fly  into  any  water  where  they  can  be  safest ;  that  whales, 
when  they  have  a  mind  to  eat  cod,  pursue  them  wherever  they  fly ; 
and  that  the  grand  leap  of  the  whale  in  the  chase  up  the  Falls  of 
Niagara  is  esteemed,  by  all  who  have  seen  it,  as  one  of  the  finest 
spectacles  in  nature." 

This  passage  is  noteworthy  as  an  early  instance  of  what 
we  now  call  American  humour,  —  the  grave  statement,  with 
a  sober  face,  of  obviously  preposterous  nonsense.  Though 
its  style  is  almost  Addisonian,  its  substance  is  more  like  what 
in  our  own  days  has  given  world-wide  popularity  to  Mark 
Twain. 

The  character  of  Franklin  is  too  considerable  for  adequate 
treatment  in  any  such  space  as  ours;  but  perhaps  we  have 


102  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

seen  enough  to  understand  how  human  nature  tended  to  de 
velop  in  eighteenth-century  America,  where  for  a  time  eco 
nomic  and  social  pressure  was  so  relaxed.  This  relaxation, 
indeed,  is  incidentally  attested  by  two  stray  passages  from 
Franklin's  writings.  One  is  in  a  letter  to  his  wife  from 
London,  dated  the  2jih  of  June,  1760:  — 

"  The  accounts  you  give  me  of  the  marriages  of  our  friends  are  very 
agreeable.  I  love  to  hear  of  everything  that  tends  to  increase  the 
number  of  good  people.  You  cannot  conceive  how  shamefully  the 
mode  here  is  a  single  life.  One  can  scarce  be  in  the  company  of  a 
dozen  men  of  circumstance  and  fortune,  but  what  it  is  odds  that  you 
find  on  inquiry  eleven  of  them  are  single.  The  great  complaint  is  the 
excessive  expensiveness  of  English  wives." 

The  other  is  from  his  celebrated  examination  before  the 
House  of  Commons  in  1766:  — 

"  Q.  What  do  you  think  is  the  reason  that  the  people  in  America 
increase  faster  than  in  England  ? 

"A.    Because  they  marry  younger,  and  more  generally. 

"  Q.    Why  so  ? 

"A.  Because  any  young  couple,  that  are  industrious,  may  easily 
obtain  land  of  their  own,  on  which  they  can  raise  a  family. 

"  Q.  Are  not  the  lower  ranks  of  the  people  more  at  their  ease  in 
America  than  in  England? 

"A.  They  may  be  so,  if  they  are  sober  and  diligent,  as  they  are 
better  paid  for  their  labour." 

From  these  very  lower  ranks  Franklin  himself  sprung.  Un 
doubtedly  he  was  what  we  call  great ;  his  qualities  were  on  a 
larger  scale  than  is  common  anywhere;  but  the  question  of 
scale  does  not  affect  that  of  character.  r  Devoting  himself 
with  unceasing  energy,  common-sense,  and  tact  to  practical 
matters,  and  never  seriously  concerning  himself  with  eternity, 
he  developed  into  a  living  example  of  such  rational,  kindly 
humanity  as  the  philosophy  of  revolutionary  France  held  at 
tainable  by  whoever  should  be  freed  from  the  distorting  influ 
ence  of  accidental  and  outworn  institutions.  In  Jonathan 
Edwards  we  found  theoretical  Puritanism,  divorced  from  life, 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  103 

proclaiming  more  uncompromisingly  than  ever  that  human 
nature  is  damnable.  In  such  temper  we  find  on  a  grand 
scale  something  aki-n  to  the  petty  enthusiasm  of  our  own  day, 
which  now  and  again  maintains  that  whoever  takes  a  glass  of 
wine  shall  sleep  in  a  drunkard's  grave,  or  that  whoever  smokes 
a  cigarette  shall  smoke  for  it  in  hell.  All  the  while  we  see 
about  us  godly  smokers  the  better  for  rational  stimulant. 
And  all  the  while  when  Edwards  was  preaching  his  unflinch 
ing  Calvinism,  Franklin,  by  living  as  well  and  as  sensibly  as 
he  could,  was  demonstrating  that,  at  least  in  America,  unaided 
human  nature  could  develop  into  an  earthly  shape  which 
looked  quite  as  far  from  damnable  as  that  of  any  Puritan 
parson. 

The  America  which  in  the  same  years  bred  Jonathan 
Edwards  and  Benjamin  Franklin  bred  too  the  American 
Revolution. 


VII 

THE    AMERICAN    REVOLUTION 

LIKE  Calvinism,  the  American  Revolution  has  generally  been 
discussed  so  passionately  that  in  eagerness  to  prove  one  side 
right  historians  have  hardly  been  able  to  consider  the  ques 
tions  which  arose  as  matters  of  mere  historic  fact.  And  as 
Professor  Tyler's  "  Literary  History  "  shows,  the  tradition  of 
the  Revolution  which  commonly  prevails  in  the  United  States 
is  a  remarkable  distortion  of  a  familiar  truth.  The  war  which 
began  at  Lexington  and  ended  six  years  later  with  the  sur 
render  of  Cornwallis  at  Yorktown  has  been  talked  about  in 
public  places  and  taught  about  in  schools  as  if  it  had  been  a 
rising  against  a  foreign  invader,  like  the  old  Spanish  wars  in 
the  Netherlands,  or  those  more  recent  wars  in  which  the 
Austrians  were  expelled  from  what  is  now  united  Italy.  No 
error  could  be  much  graver.  Up  to  1760  the  colonies  of 
America  were  as  loyal  to  the  crown  of  England  as  Australia  or 
Canada  is  to-day.  England,  of  course,  was  separated  from 
America  by  the  Atlantic  Ocean ;  and,  so  far  as  time  goes,  the 
North  Atlantic  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  wider  than  the 
equatorial  Pacific  is  to-day.  But  the  people  of  the  Ameri 
can  colonies  were  as  truly  compatriots  of  Englishmen  as  the 
citizens  of  our  Southern  States  in  1860  were  compatriots 
of  New  England  Yankees.  The  Revolution,  in  short,  was 
a  civil  war,  like  the  wars  of  Cavaliers  and  Round-heads  a 
century  before  in  England,  or  the  war  in  our  own  country 
between  1861  and  1865.  Both  of  those  other  civil  wars, 
the  older  English  and  the  newer  American,  have  already  faded 
into  a  past  where  one  can  feel  them,  for  all  their  tragedy,  to 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION  105 

have  something  of  the  character  of  family  quarrels  which 
have  ended  in  fresh  family  concord.  •  What  distinguishes  the 
American  Revolution  from  other  civil  wars  is  the  fact  that 
the  quarrel  which  produced  it  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago 
has  never  been  truly  settled  or  forgotten. 

Already  in  1780  American  feeling  toward  England  had 
become  consciously  foreign.  Consciously  foreign  it  remains  ; 
there  are  plenty  of  sensible  Americans  to-day  who  really  feel 
less  strange  in  Paris  than  in  London.  In  modern  Boston  the 
unaltered  King's  Chapel  of  the  royal  governors,  surrounded  by 
the  tombs  of  colonial  worthies,  seems  almost  as  much  a  relic 
of  some  mysterious  past  as  the  ruins  of  Stonehenge  seem  on 
Salisbury  Plain.  Yet  one  has  but  to  land  at  Halifax  to  see  a 
surviving  image  of  what  Boston  was  in  1775;  Canada  to 
day  is  English  in  the  sense  in  which  Boston  was  English 
when  George  III.  ascended  the  throne.  The  political  fron 
tier  which  divides  Canada  from  New  England,  however, 
remains  as  distinct  as  it  was  when  Canada  was  French;  for 
New  England  now  is  not  English  but  American.  The  Ameri 
can  Revolution  was  a  civil  war  whereof  the  end  is  not  yet, 
and  indeed  may  never  be. 

To  those  Americans  who  most  cherish  our  deep  national 
ideal  of  union,  this  fact  has  an  aspect  which  may  well  qualify 
our  just  pride  of  independence.  This  ideal  of  union  means 
that,  however  much  men  of  common  race,  language,  and  prin 
ciples  may  differ,  it  is  best  that  they  devote  their  energies  to 
neglecting,  or  at  worst  to  compromising,  their  differences,  and  to 
working  in  common  for  ends  in  which  all  believe,  trusting  that 
from  such  common  effort  better  things  shall  ensue  for  mankind. 
It  needs  no  great  effort  of  imagination,  and  as  time  passes  it 
will  probably  need  less  and  less,  to  see  that  this  ideal  of  union 
applies  as  fully  to  the  events  of  1776  as  to  those  of  1861. 
Had  the  Southern  States  succeeded  in  their  heroic  attempt  at 
secession,  our  country  to-day,  whatever  its  condition,  must 
have  been  politically  so  weak  as  to  make  impossible  the 


106  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

imperial  questions  now  affecting  our  politics.  If  the  American 
colonies  had  failed  in  their  heroic  attempt  to  assert  indepen 
dence  of  England,  there  can  be  little  question  that  by  this  time 
the  imperial  dominance  of  our  language,  our  law,  and  our 
ideals  would  be  assured  throughout  the  world.  The  American 
Revolution,  then,  disuniting  the  English-speaking  race,  has 
had  on  history  an  effect  which  those  who  cherish  the  moral 
and  political  heritage  of  our  language  may  well  grow  to  feel 
in  some  sense  tragic. 

To  modern  scholars  of  the  critical  kind,  too,  the  Revolution 
is  becoming  more  of  a  puzzle  than  it  used  to  be.  The  distor 
tion  of  tradition  which  has  represented  it  rather  as  a  war  against 
an  alien  invader  than  as  a  civil  war,  is  not  our  only  popular 
error.  American  writings,  in  general,  tell  only  one  side  of 
the  story  ;  and  we  have  been  accustomed  to  accept  their  ex 
parte,  though  sincere,  assertions  as  comprehensive.  So  much 
is  this  the  case  that  few  remember  the  origin  of  a  phrase  which 
from  a  political  letter  written  by  Rufus  Choate  in  1856  has 
passed  into  idiomatic  use.  This  phrase,  "  glittering  generality," 
is  commonly  used  of  empty  rhetoric  :  Mr.  Choate  used  it  of  a 
piece  of  rhetoric  which  American  tradition  is  apt  to  believe 
the  least  empty  in  our  history.  His  words  were  :  "  The 
glittering  and  sounding  generalities  of  natural  right  which 
make  up  the  Declaration  of  Independence."  Now,  to  describe 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  a  tissue  of  glittering  gener 
alities  is  by  no  means  to  tell  its  whole  story ;  but  so  to 
describe  it  is  probably  as  near  the  truth  as  to  accept  it  for  a 
sober  statement  of  historic  fact.  Not  that  Jefferson,  who 
wrote  it,  or  his  compatriots  who  signed  it,  were  insincere  ;  the 
chances  are  that  they  believed  what  they  said.  But  the  fact 
that  in  a  moment  of  high  passion  a  man  believes  a  thing  does 
not  make  it  true.  And  when  under  the  cool  scrutiny  of  pos 
terity  fervid  convictions  prove  somewhat  mistaken,  the  vital 
question  is  from  what  they  arose. 

Professor    Tyler    collects    and    arranges    as    never    before 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION  107 

material  which  may  help  one  to  hazard  an  answer  to  this 
question.  Although  in  pure  literature  the  Revolution  has  left 
no  more  permanent  record  than  was  left  by  the  century  and  a 
half  which  came  before,  it  was  almost  as  fruitful  of  publication 
bearing  on  contemporary  fact  as  were  those  Civil  Wars  of  Eng 
land  which  resulted  in  the  execution  of  King  Charles  I.  and  the 
momentary  dominance  of  Cromwell's  Puritanism.  Professor 
Tyler  is  a  thoroughly  patriotic  American  citizen ;  this  does  not 
prevent  him  from  setting  forth  with  full  sympathy  a  fact  which 
any  one  who  reads  the  long-neglected  writings  of  the  Ameri 
can  loyalists  must  be  brought  to  acknowledge.  Right  or  wrong, 
these  loyalists  were  sincerely  patriotic,  too,  and  willing,  when 
the  crucial  moment  came,  to  sacrifice  fortune  and  home  to  the 
principles  which  they  held  as  devoutly  as  ever  revolutionist 
held  his.  What  is  more,  as  one  considers  to-day  the  arguments 
of  the  loyalists,  it  is  hard  to  feel  them  legally  weaker  than  those 
which  finally  prevailed.  Rather  one  begins  to  feel  that  the 
two  sides  misunderstood  one  another  more  profoundly  than 
has  yet  been  realised.  They  used  the  same  terms,  but  they 
assumed  them  to  mean  widely  different  things. 

Take,  for  example,  one  of  the  best-remembered  phrases  of 
the  period,  —  u  no  taxation  without  representation."  What 
does  this  really  mean  ?  To  the  American  mind  of  to-day,  as 
to  the  mind  of  the  revolutionary  leaders  in  King  George's 
colonies,  it  means  that  no  constituency  should  be  taxed  by  a 
legislative  body  to  which  it  has  not  actually  elected  representa 
tives,  generally  resident  within  its  limits.  To  the  English 
mind  of  1770,  more  than  sixty  years  before  the  first  Reform 
Bill,  it  meant  something  very  different.  In  England  to  this 
day,  indeed,  the  notion  that  a  representative  should  be  resident 
in  his  constituency  is  as  strange  as  to  any  American  it  is 
familiar.  Not  only  was  this  the  case  in  eighteenth-century 
England,  but  many  boroughs  which  returned  members  to 
Parliament  had  hardly  any  residents ;  while  some  of  the  chief 
cities  in  the  kingdom  returned  no  members  at  all.  In  King 


IOS  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

George's  England,  we  see,  the  question  of  representation  had 
little  to  do  with  actual  suffrage.  What  no  taxation  with 
out  representation  meant  there,  was  that  no  British  subject 
should  be  taxed  by  a  body  where  there  was  not  somebody  to 
represent  his  case.  This  view,  the  traditional  one  of  the 
English  Common  Law,  was  held  by  the  loyalists  of  America. 
When  the  revolutionists  complained  that  America  elected 
no  representatives  to  Parliament,  the  loyalists  answered  that 
neither  did  many  of  the  most  populous  towns  in  the  mother 
country ;  that  the  interests  of  those  towns  were  perfectly  well 
cared  for  by  members  elected  elsewhere ;  and  that  if  any 
body  should  inquire  what  members  of  Parliament  were  pro 
tecting  the  interests  of  the  American  colonies,  the  answer 
would  instantly  satisfy  any  complaint.  This  contention  is  really 
strong.  Among  the  men  who  defended  the  American  cause  in 
the  House  of  Commons  were  the  elder  Pitt,  Fox,  and  Burke. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  New  England  or  Virginia  could  have 
exported  to  Parliament  representatives  in  any  respect  superior. 
But  the  argument  of  the  American  loyalists — Tories,  we 
have  called  them  for  the  last  century  or  so,  but  a  truer  name 
were  Imperial  Unionists  —  had  no  effect  on  the  revolutionists, 
—  patriots,  Imperial  Secessionists.  The  course  of  the  equally 
sincere  arguments  of  this  party  may  be  typified  in  two  brief 
extracts  from  the  utterances  of  one  of  their  first  heroes, — 
James  Otis.  In  February,  1761,  having  resigned  the  office 
of  Advocate-General  because  he  would  not  support  an  ap 
plication  to  the  Superior  Court  for  writs  of  assistance,  he 
appeared  against  them,  and  among  other  things  spoke  as 
follows  :  — 

"  I  shall  not  think  much  of  my  pains  in  this  cause,  as  I  engaged 
in  it  from  principle.  I  was  solicited  to  argue  this  cause  as  advocate- 
general  ;  and  because  I  would  not,  I  have  been  charged  with  desertion 
from  my  office.  To  this  charge  I  can  give  a  very  sufficient  answer. 
I  renounced  that  office,  and  I  argue  this  cause,  from  the  same  prin 
ciple  ;  and  I  argue  it  with  the  greater  pleasure,  as  it  is  in  favour  of 
British  liberty,  at  a  time  when  we  hear  the  greatest  monarch  upon 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION  109 

earth  declaring  from  his  throne  that  he  glories  in  the  name  of  Briton, 
and  that  the  orivileges  of  his  people  are  dearer  to  him  than  the  most 
valuable  prerogatives  of  his  crown ;  and  as  it  is  in  opposition  to  a 
kind  of  power,  the  exercise  of  which,  in  former  periods  of  English 
history,  cost  one  king  of  England  his  head,  and  another  his  throne. 
.  .  .  The  writ  prayed  for  in  this  petition,  being  general,  is  illegal.  .  .  . 

u  Let  us  see  what  authority  there  is  for  it.  Not  more  than  one 
instance  can  be  found  in  all  our  law  books  ;  and  that  was  in  the  zenith 
of  arbitrary  power,  namely,  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  when  star- 
chamber  powers  were  pushed  to  extremity  by  some  ignorant  clerk  of 
the  exchequer.  But  had  this  writ  been  in  any  book  whatsoever,  it 
would  have  been  illegal.  All  precedents  are  under  control  of  the 
principles  of  law.  Lord  Talbot  says  it  is  better  to  observe  these  than 
any  precedents.  .  .  .  No  acts  of  Parliament  can  establish  such  a 
writ.  .  .  .  An  act  against  the  constitution  is  void." 

Otis,  in  short,  a  trained  lawyer,  argued  this  case  on  grounds 
of  strict  legal  precedent.  A  year  later  this  same  James  Otis 
published  a  pamphlet  entitled  "  The  Vindication  of  the  House 
of  Representatives,"  wherein  the  basis  of  his  argument  is  as 
remote  from  Common  Law  temper  as  it  is  agreeable  to  the 
abstract  philosophy  of  Revolutionary  France :  — 

"  i.  God  made  all  men  naturally  equal.  2.  The  ideas  of  earthly 
superiority,  pre-eminence,  and  grandeur  are  educational ;  —  at  least 
acquired,  not  innate.  3.  Kings  were,  —  and  plantation  governors 
should  be,  —  made  for  the  good  of  the  people,  and  not  the  people 
for  them.  4.  No  government  has  a  right  to  make  hobby-horses, 
asses,  and  slaves  of  the  subjects,  nature  having  made  sufficient  of  the 
two  former,  .  .  .  but  none  of  the  last,  —  which  infallibly  proves  they 
are  unnecessary.  5.  Though  most  governments  are  <de  facto' 
arbitrary,  and  consequently  the  curse  and  scandal  of  human  nature, 
yet  none  are  *  de  jure '  arbitrary." 

The  latter  of  these  utterances  by  Otis  is  doubtless  the  more 
characteristic  of  our  revolutionary  temper,  and  perhaps  of 
what  has  since  been  the  native  temper  of  America.  In  the 
former  case  his  argument,  like  that  of  any  sound  lawyer,  is 
concerned  with  the  question  of  what  the  law  is ;  in  the  latter, 
his  argument  is  concerned  with  a  very  different  question, 
extremely  foreign  to  the  legal  traditions  of  England,  —  namely, 
what  the  law  ought  to  be.  At  least  in  New  England,  one 


I io  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

can  see  why  the  latter  kind  of  reasoning  proved  so  agreeable 
to  general  sentiment.  A  century  and  a  half  of  incessant 
theological  discussion  had  made  the  native  Yankee  mind  far 
more  accessible  to  moral  arguments  than  to  legal.  By  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  then,  native  Americans 
were  more  affected  by  general  principles  than  were  the  native 
English. 

Again,  as  the  Great  Awakening  of  1740  showed,  the 
American  temper  of  revolutionary  times  was  more  explosive 
than  the  English,  just  as  American  temper  remains  to-day. 
No  living  creature,  to  be  sure,  is  more  tenacious  of  rights  than 
an  Englishman,  but  until  you  meddle  with  him  he  is  not  very 
apt  to  trouble  himself  about  what  you  say.  To  this  day,  on  the 
other  hand,  Americans  get  highly  excited  about  mere  phrases 
with  which  they  happen  not  to  agree.  So  it  was  in  the  last 
days  of  British  dominion  here.  At  the  time  of  the  Stamp 
Act  the  house  of  Thomas  Hutchinson,  Lieutenant-Governor 
of  Massachusetts,  and  a  thoroughly  patriotic  New  Englander, 
was  sacked  by  a  mob ;  and  his  library  and  collection  of  his 
torical  papers  were  destroyed  as  ruthlessly  as  were  his  mirrors 
and  his  furniture.  In  1764  the  house  of  Martin  Howard,  a 
Tory  gentleman  of  Newport,  who  had  ventured  to  answer 
the  pamphlets  of  James  Otis,  was  similarly  destroyed.  In 
1775  Samuel  Seabury,  afterwards  the  ancestral  bishop  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  the  United  States,  was  sub 
jected,  together  with  his  family,  to  a  brutal  mob  violence, 
which  only  stopped  short  of  outrage  and  murder.  He  was 
believed  to  be  the  author  of  some  strong  loyalist  arguments 
signed  "A  Westchester  Farmer;"  and  though  he  was  an 
admirably  devoted  parish  priest,  nothing  could  protect  him, 
an  advocate  of  unpopular  principles,  from  the  explosive 
violence  of  the  Connecticut  mob.  By  1775,  in  short,  the 
misunderstanding  between  the  temper  of  native  America  and 
that  of  the  mother  country  had  got  beyond  the  point  of 
argument. 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION          in 

The  fact  that  Seabury  was  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of 
England,  though  it  had  little  to  do  with  his  uncomfortable 
experience,  recalls  a  half-forgotten  phase  of  New  England 
temper  which  freshly  illustrates  this  honest  international  mis 
understanding  of  what  seem  the  simplest  terms.1  As  is  well 
known,  no  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England  can  receive 
orders  except  at  the  hands  of  a  bishop.  In  the  American 
colonies  there  were  no  bishops.  Any  American  who  desired 
to  become  a  clergyman  of  what  is  now  our  Episcopal  Church, 
then,  was  compelled  to  go  abroad  for  ordination.  Chiefly 
to  avert  this  hardship,  certain  churchmen,  both  in  England 
and  in  America,  began  a  movement  for  the  establishment  of 
bishoprics  in  the  American  colonies.  Whoever  has  followed 
the  history  of  Anglican  episcopacy  from  the  time  of  Charles 
II.  onward  will  feel  pretty  sure  that  such  bishoprics  would 
have  had  no  more  political  effect  than  have  those  of  our 
present  Episcopal  Church.  In  colonial  times,  however,  even 
among  Americans  of  high  intelligence,  the  mere  word  "  bishop  " 
revived  in  pristine  fervour  not  only  all  the  hatred,  but  all  the 
dread  which  had  been  excited  in  the  minds  of  the  ancestral 
Puritans  by  the  persecutions  of  Laud.  An  innocent  desire 
that  devout  American  Episcopalians  might  obtain  holy  orders 
without  crossing  the  Atlantic  was  honestly  regarded  by  hun 
dreds  of  other  Americans  as  an  effort  to  impose  upon  the 
religious  freedom  of  the  colonies  the  absolute  domination  of 
an  intolerant  and  persecuting  established  Church.  At  least  in 
ecclesiastical  matters,  the  instinctive  temper  of  revolutionary 
Americans  remained  surprisingly  like  that  of  their  immigrant 
ancestors  born  under  Queen  Elizabeth. 

The  American  Revolution,  we  begin  to  see,  which  resulted 
in  imperial  disunion,  sprang  from  a  deep  temperamental  mis 
understanding  between  the  native  English  and  their  American 

1  This  line  of  thought  was  suggested  by  the  thesis  for  which  Dr.  Cross  was 
awarded  the  degree  of  Ph.D.  and  the  Toppan  Prize  at  Harvard  University 
in  1899. 


ii2  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

compatriots.  Of  this  symptoms  may  be  found  on  all  sides. 
Professor  Tyler  shows,  more  definitely  than  has  ever  been 
shown  before,  what  extraordinary  power  of  political  pamphlet 
eering  developed  here  during  the  revolutionary  period.  In  the 
contemporary  England,  of  course,  there  was  plenty  of  such 
pamphleteering.  Those  masterpieces  which  were  signed  by 
the  name  of  Junius  were  hardly  a  dozen  years  old ;  and  Dr. 
Johnson  himself  was,  among  other  things,  a  writer  of  political 
pamphlets.  In  native  English  literature,  however,  the  most 
salient  period  of  political  pamphleteering  is  probably  the  reign 
of  Queen  Anne,  when,  to  go  no  further,  so  much  of  the 
work  of  Arbuthnot,  of  Defoe,  and  of  the  masterly  Swift  took 
this  form.  If  one  looks  further  back,  too,  one  may  find  Eng 
land  flooded  with  political  pamphlets  during  the  civil  wars  of 
Cavaliers  and  Roundheads.  The  political  pamphlets  of  revo 
lutionary  America,  of  course,  like  the  impassioned  outbursts 
of  Otis  and  of  Patrick  Henry  and  of  the  other  orators  whose 
names  are  preserved  in  our  manuals  of  patriotic  elocution, 
were  phrased  in  the  style  of  the  eighteenth  century.  What 
ever  their  phrasing,  nevertheless,  these  pamphlets  indicate  in 
our  country  a  kind  of  intellectual  activity  which  in  England 
had  displayed  itself  most  characteristically  a  hundred  years 
earlier.  More  and  more,  one  begins  to  think,  the  secret  of 
the  American  Revolution  may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  while 
under  the  influence  of  European  conditions  the  English  tem 
perament  had  steadily  altered  from  that  of  spontaneous,  en 
thusiastic,  versatile  Elizabethans  to  that  of  stubborn,  robust 
John  Bull,  the  original  American  temper,  born  under  Elizabeth 
herself,  had  never  deeply  changed. 

What  the  difference  was,  to  be  sure,  may  long  remain  a 
matter  of  dispute ;  but  before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  native  Americans  had  begun  to  feel  it.  Francis  Hopkin- 
son,  a  remarkably  vivacious  and  spirited  writer,  was  among 
the  first  to  specify  the  fact.  A  Philadelphia  gentleman 
born  in  1737,  he  saw  something  of  good  society  in  England 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION  113 

between  1766  and  1768.  He  was  a  signer  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  ;  and  he  died  United  States  District  Judge 
for  Pennsylvania  in  1791.  His  only  familiar  work  is  his 
satirical  poem,  "  The  Battle  of  the  Kegs ; "  but  his  writings 
in  general  are  entertaining  ;  and  in  the  posthumous  collec 
tion  of  his  works  is  a  passage,  apparently  written  during  the 
revolutionary  period,  which  shows  beyond  question  that  he  felt 
as  distinctly  as  people  feel  to-day  how  different  the  tempera 
ments  of  England  and  of  America  had  become  :  — 

"This  infatuated  [English]  people  have  wearied  the  world  for  these 
hundred  years  with  loud  eulogiurns  upon  liberty  and  their  constitu 
tion  ;  and  yet  they  see  that  constitution  languishing  in  a  deep  decay 
without  making  any  effort  for  its  recovery.  Amused  with  trifles,  and 
accustomed  to  venality  and  corruption,  they  are  not  alarmed  at  the 
consequences  of  their  supineness.  They  love  to  talk  of  their  glorious 
constitution  because  the  idea  is  agreeable,  and  they  are  satisfied  with 
the  idea ;  and  they  honour  their  king,  because  it  is  the  fashion  to  honour 
the  king.  .  .  . 

"  The  extreme  ignorance  of  the  common  people  of  this  civilised 
country  can  scarce  be  credited.  In  general  they  know  nothing  be 
yond  the  particular  branch  of  business  which  their  parents  or  the 
parish  happened  to  choose  for  them.  This,  indeed,  they  practise  with 
unremitting  diligence ;  but  never  think  of  extending  their  knowledge 
farther. 

"A  manufacturer  has  been  brought  up  a  maker  of  pin-heads;  he 
has  been  at  this  business  forty  years  and,  of  course,  makes  pin-heads 
with  great  dexterity;  but  he  cannot  make  a  whole  pin  for  his  life. 
He  thinks  it  is  the  perfection  of  human  nature  to  make  pin-heads. 
He  leaves  other  matters  to  inferior  abilities.  It  is  enough  for  him 
that  he  believes  in  the  Athanasian  creed,  reverences  the  splendour  of 
the  court,  and  makes  pin-heads.  This  he  conceives  to  be  the  sum- 
total  of  religion,  politics  and  trade.  He  is  sure  that  London  is  the 
finest  city  in  the  world  ;  Blackfriars  Bridge  the  most  superb  of  all 
possible  bridges ;  and  the  river  Thames,  the  largest  river  in  (the) 
universe.  It  is  vain  to  tell  him  that  there  are  many  rivers  in  America, 
in  comparison  of  which  the  Thames  is  but  a  ditch;  that  there  are 
single  provinces  there  larger  than  all  England  ;  and  that  the  colonies 
formerly  belonging  to  Great  Britain,  now  independent  states,  are 
vastly  more  extensive  than  England,  Wales,  Scotland  and  Ireland, 
taken  all  together  —  he  cannot  conceive  this.  He  goes  into  his  best 
parlour,  and  looks  on  a  map  of  England,  four  feet  square  ;  on  the 
other  side  of  the  room  he  sees  a  map  of  North  and  South  America, 

8 


ii4  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

not  more  than  two  feet  square,  and  exclaims ;  — '  How  can  these  things 
be?  It  is  altogether  impossible.'  He  has  read  the  Arabian  Nights' 
Entertainment,  and  he  hears  this  wonderful  account  of  America ;  — 
he  believes  the  one  as  much  as  the  other.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  not  so  in  America.  The  lowest  tradesman  there  is  not  with 
out  some  degree  of  general  knowledge.  They  turn  their  heads  to 
everything;  their  situation  obliges  them  to  do  so.  A  farmer  there 
cannot  run  to  an  artist  upon  every  trifling  occasion.  He  must  make 
and  mend  and  contrive  for  himself.  This  I  observed  in  my  travels 
through  that  country.  In  many  towns  and  in  every  city  they  have 
public  libraries.  Not  a  tradesman  but  will  find  time  to  read.  He 
acquires  knowledge  imperceptibly.  He  is  amused  with  voyages  and 
travels  and  becomes  acquainted  with  the  geography,  customs,  and  com 
merce  of  other  countries.  He  reads  political  disquisitions  and  learns 
the  great  outlines  of  his  rights  as  a  man  and  as  a  citizen.  He  dips  a 
little  into  philosophy,  and  knows  that  the  apparent  motion  of  the  sun 
is  occasioned  by  the  real  motion  of  the  earth.  In  a  word,  he  is  sure 
that,  notwithstanding  the  determination  of  the  king,  lords,  and  com 
mons  to  the  contrary,  two  and  two  can  never  make  five. 

"  Such  are  the  people  of  England,  and  such  the  people  of  America." 

It  is  worth  while  to  compare  with  this  sketch  of  Hopkin- 
son's  a  passage  concerning  Americans  written  a  little  later  by 
a  Frenchman,  named  Crevecoeur,  who  resided  near  New  York 
from  1754  to  1780  :  — 

"What  then  is  the  American,  this  new  man?  He  is  either  a  Euro 
pean  or  a  descendant  of  a  European,  hence  that  strange  mixture  of 
blood,  which  you  will  find  in  no  other  country.  I  could  point  out  to 
you  a  family  whose  grandfather  was  an  Englishman,  whose  wife  was 
Dutch,  whose  son  married  a  French  woman,  and  whose  present  four 
sons  have  now  four  wives  of  different  nations.  He  is  an  American, 
who  leaving  behind  him  all  his  ancient  prejudices  and  manners, 
receives  new  ones  from  the  new  mode  of  life  he  has  embraced,  the 
new  government  he  obeys,  the  new  rank  he  holds.  He  becomes  an 
American  by  being  received  in  the  broad  lap  of  our  great  Alma  Mater. 

"  Here  individuals  of  all  nations  are  melted  into  a  new  race  of  men, 
whose  labours  and  posterity  will  one  day  cause  great  changes  in  the 
world.  Americans  are  the  western  pilgrims,  who  are  carrying  along 
with  them  that  great  mass  of  arts,  sciences,  vigour,  and  industry  which 
began  long  since  in  the  East ;  they  will  finish  the  great  circle.  The 
Americans  were  once  scattered  all  over  Europe ;  here  they  are  incor 
porated  into  one  of  the  finest  systems  of  population  which  has  ever 
appeared,  and  which  hereafter  will  become  distinct  by  the  power  of 
the  different  climates  they  inhabit.  The  American  is  a  new  man,  who 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION  115 

acts  upon  new  principles  ;  he  must  therefore  entertain  new  ideas,  and 
form  new  opinions.  From  involuntary  idleness,  servile  dependence, 
penury,  and  useless  labour,  he  has  passed  to  toils  of  a  very  different 
nature,  rewarded  by  ample  subsistence.  — This  is  an  American." 

The  contrast  between  these  two  passages  is  sharp.  Hop- 
kinson's  American  is,  after  all,  a  human  being ;  Crevecoeur's 
American  is  no  more  human  than  some  ideal  savage  of  Vol 
taire  ;  and  yet,  in  Crevecoeur's  time  and  since,  it  has  been 
the  fashion  to  suppose  that  the  French  understand  us  better 
than  our  true  brothers,  the  English. 

For  this  there  is  a  certain  ground.  Englishmen  are  not 
accessible  to  general  ideas ;  and  they  are  not  explosive.  The 
French  are  both ;  and  so,  like  the  subjects  of  Queen  Eliza 
beth,  are  the  native  Americans.  Since  1775,  then,  America 
has  often  seemed  more  nearly  at  one  with  France  than  with 
England.  Suggestive  evidence  of  a  deeper  truth  may  be 
found  in  the  career  of  the  national  hero  whom  the  French 
cherish  in  common  with  ourselves,  —  Lafayette.  Stirred  by 
enthusiasm  for  the  rights  of  man,  he  offered  his  sword  to  those 
rebellious  colonies  whom  he  believed  to  be  fighting  for  mere 
abstract  principles  j  and  he  had  warrant  for  his  belief,  in  the 
glittering  generalities  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  He 
saw  our  Revolution  triumphant.  He  went  back  to  France, 
and  saw  the  Revolution  there  end  in  tragic  failure.  To  the 
last  he  could  never  guess  why  the  abstract  principles  which 
had  worked  so  admirably  in  America  would  not  work  in 
France.  The  real  truth  he  never  perceived.  Whatever 
reasons  the  revolutionary  Americans  gave  for  their  conduct, 
their  underlying  impulse  was  one  which  they  had  inherited 
unchanged  from  their  immigrant  ancestors ;  namely,  that  the 
rights  for  which  men  should  die  are  not  abstract  but  legal. 
The  abstract  phrases  of  the  American  Revolution,  deeply  as 
they  have  affected  the  surface  of  American  thought,  remain 
superficial.  By  1775,  however,  the  course  of  American  his 
tory  had  made  our  conception  of  legal  rights  different  from  that 


ii6  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

of  the  English.  We  had  developed  local  traditions  of  our 
own,  which  we  believed  as  immemorial  as  ever  were  the  local 
traditions  of  the  mother  country.  The  question  of  represen 
tation,  for  example,  was  not  abstract ;  it  was  one  of  established 
constitutional  practice ;  but  when  we  came  to  discussing  it, 
we  did  not  understand  each  other's  terms.  Misunderstanding 
followed,  a  family  quarrel,  a  civil  war,  and  world  disunion. 
Beneath  this  world  disunion,  all  the  while,  is  a  deeper  fact, 
binding  America  and  England  at  last  together  at  heart,  —  each 
really  and  truly  believed  itself  to  be  asserting  the  rights  which 
immemorial  custom  had  sanctioned.  Revolutionary  France, 
on  the  other  hand,  tried  to  introduce  into  human  history  a 
system  of  abstract  rights  different  from  anything  which  ever 
flourished  under  the  sun.  Naturally  it  came  to  grief.  And 
Lafayette,  who  never  even  in  his  dreams  suspected  the  force 
and  vitality  of  that  Common  Law  tradition  which  is  instinc 
tively  cherished  by  every  English-speaking  race,  never  under 
stood  what  either  revolution  really  signified. 

Slight,  vague,  and  cursory  as  our  consideration  has  been, 
we  can  now  perhaps  begin  to  see  what  the  American  Revo 
lution  means.  By  1775,  the  national  experience  which  had 
been  accumulating  in  England  from  the  days  of  Queen  Eliza 
beth  had  brought  the  temper  of  the  native  English  to  a  state 
very  remote  from  what  this  native  temper  had  been  under  the 
Tudor  sovereigns.  In  that  same  year  the  lack  of  economic 
pressure  to  which  we  have  given  the  name  of  national  in 
experience  had  kept  the  original  American  temper  singularly 
unaltered.  When  at  last,  on  the  accession  of  George  III., 
legal  and  constitutional  questions  were  presented  in  the  same 
terms  to  English-speaking  temperaments  on  different  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  these  temperaments  had  been  forced,  by  mere 
historic  circumstance,  so  far  apart  that  they  honestly  could 
not  understand  each  other.  Neither  of  them,  then,  would 
have  been  true  to  the  deepest  traditions  of  their  common 
race,  had  anything  less  than  the  Revolution  resulted. 


VIII 

LITERATURE    IN    AMERICA    FROM    1776    TO    l8oO 

THE  first  six  chapters  of  Mr.  Henry  Adams's  "  History  of 
the  United  States "  admirably  set  forth  the  stagnation  of 
mental  life  in  America  between  the  close  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  For  half  a 
generation  or  more  our  newly  independent  country  was 
adrift ;  the  true  course  of  our  national  life  was  slow  in  de 
claring  itself.  Until  the  very  end  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
then,  we  remained  without  trace  of  lasting  literature.  But 
just  as  in  earlier  periods  there  had  been  writing  which  a  study 
like  ours  cannot  quite  neglect,  so  during  the  last  quarter  of 
this  eighteenth  century  there  was  a  good  deal  of  publication  at 
which  we  must  glance. 

One  fact  is  instantly  salient.  No  one  who  has  written  of 
our  literary  expression  during  the  period  in  question  has  made 
much  distinction  between  public  men  and  those  who  for  cour 
tesy's  sake  may  be  styled  pure  men  of  letters.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  anything  could  much  more  have  surprised  Washing 
ton,  or  John  Adams,  or  Jefferson,  or  Madison,  or  Hamilton, 
or  the  rest,  than  to  find  themselves  discussed  in  the  literary 
history  of  their  country  much  as  their  eminent  contemporary 
Dr.  Johnson  is  discussed  in  the  literary  history  of  England. 
Without  doubt,  however,  the  father  of  our  country,  together 
with  that  eminent  band  of  political  obstetricians  who  co 
operated  at  its  birth,  not  only  displayed  practical  skill,  but 
also  wrote  memorably  about  the  matters  which  engaged  their 
attention.  So,  for  want  of  any  memorable  literature  during 
our  early  years  of  independence,  our  literary  historians  have 


uS  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

been  glad   to  treat  our   elder   public  men  as   men  of  letters 
too. 

In  this  the  historians  have  been  right.  During  the  last 
quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  our  public  men  wrote  in 
admirable  style.  They  were  earnestly  thoughtful;  they  had 
strong  common  sense ;  they  were  far-sighted  and  temperate ; 
and  they  expressed  themselves  with  that  dignified  urbanity 
which  in  their  time  marked  the  English  of  educated  people. 
In  purely  literary  history,  however,  they  can  hardly  be  re 
garded  as  much  more  important  than  Blackstone  is  in  the 
literary  history  of  England. 

This  kind  of  American  writing  reached  its  acme  in  1787 
and  1788,  when  Hamilton,  Madison,  and  John  Jay  supported 
the  still  unaccepted  Constitution  of  the  United  States  in  a 
remarkable  series  of  political  essays,  named  the  "  Federalist." 
As  a  series  of  formal  essays,  the  "  Federalist "  groups  itself 
roughly  with  the  "  Tatler,"  the  "Spectator,"  and  those 
numerous  descendants  of  theirs  which  fill  the  literary  records 
of  eighteenth-century  England.  It  differs,  however,  from  all 
these,  in  both  substance  and  purpose.  The  "  Tatler,"  the 
"  Spectator,"  and  their  successors  dealt  with  superficial  mat 
ters  in  a  spirit  of  literary  amenity  :  the  "  Federalist "  deals, 
in  an  argumentative  spirit  as  earnest  as  that  of  any  Puritan 
divine,  with  political  principles  paramount  in  our  history ;  and 
it  is  so  wisely  thoughtful  that  one  may  almost  declare  it  the 
permanent  basis  of  sound  thinking  concerning  American  con 
stitutional  law.  Like  all  the  educated  writing  of  the  eight 
eenth  century,  too,  it  is  phrased  with  a  rhythmical  balance 
and  urbane  polish  which  give  it  claim  to  literary  distinction. 
After  all,  however,  one  can  hardly  feel  it  much  more  signifi 
cant  in  a  history  of  pure  letters  than  are  the  opinions  in  which 
a  little  later  Judge  Marshall  and  Judge  Story  developed  and 
expounded  the  constitutional  law  which  the  "Federalist" 
commented  on.  Its  true  character  appears  when  we  remem 
ber  the  most  important  thing  published  in  England  during  the 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA,    1776-1800     119 

same  years,  —  the  poetry  of  Robert  Burns.  The  contrast 
between  Burns  and  the  u  Federalist "  tells  the  whole  literary 
story.  Just  as  in  the  seventeenth  century  the  only  serious 
literature  of  America  was  a  phase  of  that  half-historical,-  half- 
theological  sort  of  work  which  had  been  a  minor  part  of  Eng 
lish  literature  generations  before;  so  in  the  eighteenth  century 
the  chief  product  of  American  literature  was  an  extremely  ripe 
example  of  such  political  pamphleteering  as  in  England  had 
been  a  minor  phase  of  letters  during  the  period  of  Queen 
Anne.  Pure  letters  in  America  were  still  to  come. 

Even  during  the  seventeenth  century,  however,  as  we  saw 
in  our  glance  at  the  "Tenth  Muse,"  Mrs.  Anne  Bradstreet, 
there  had  been  in  America  sporadic  and  consciously  imitative 
efforts  to  produce  something  literary.  So  there  were  during 
the  eighteenth  century.  We  had  sundry  writers  of  apho 
ristic  verse  remotely  following  the  tradition  of  Pope ;  and  we 
had  satire,  modelled  on  that  of  Charles  Churchill,  a  popular 
contemporary  writer,  now  remembered  mostly  because  some 
of  our  ancestors  paid  him  the  compliment  of  imitation. 
Toward  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  however,  a  little 
group  of  clever  and  enthusiastic  men  made  a  serious  attempt 
to  establish  a  native  literature ;  and  though  the  results  of  this 
effort  were  neither  excellent  nor  permanent,  the  effort  was. 
earnest  and  characteristic  enough  to  deserve  attention. 

To  understand  its  place  in  our  literary  records  we  must 
recall  something  of  our  intellectual  history.  This  may  be 
said  to  have  begun  with  the  foundation  of  Harvard  College 
as  a  seminary  of  scholarly  tradition  in  1636.  Throughout 
the  seventeenth  century,  Harvard,  then  the  only  school  of 
the  higher  learning  in  America,  remained  the  only  organised 
centre  of  American  intellectual  life.  Cotton  Mather,  we  re 
member,  was  a  Harvard  graduate,  a  member  of  the  Board  of 
Overseers  and  of  the  Corporation,  and  an  eager  aspirant  for 
the  presidency  of  the  college.  Long  before  his  busy  life  was 
ended,  however,  the  tendency  toward  liberalism  which  has 


120  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

remained  characteristic  of  Harvard  had  swerved  it  from  the 
old  Puritan  tradition ;  and  Yale  College,  the  stronghold  of 
New  England  orthodoxy,  had  consequently  been  established 
in  New  Haven.  It  was  from  Yale  that  Jonathan  Edwards 
emerged.  The  fact  that  the  centre  of  American  intellectual 
life  was  no  longer  on  the  shores  of  Boston  Bay  was  again 
attested  by  the  career  of  Franklin,  who,  though  born  in  Boston, 
lived  mostly  in  what  during  his  time  was  the  principal  city  of 
America, —  Philadelphia.  In  what  we  said  of  the  "  Federalist," 
too,  the  same  trend  was  implied.  Boston  bred  revolutionary 
worthies,  of  course :  James  Otis  was  a  Massachusetts  man,  so 
were  John  and  Samuel  Adams,  so  earlier  was  Thomas  Hutchin- 
son,  so  later  was  Fisher  Ames.  But  of  the  chief  writers  of 
the  u  Federalist,"  Hamilton  and  Jay  were  from  New  York ; 
and  Madison  was  one  of  that  great  school  of  Virginia  public 
men  which  included  Patrick  Henry  and  Jefferson  and  Wash 
ington,  and  Marshall,  and  many  more.  In  the  American  per 
spective  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Eastern  Massachusetts  does 
not  loom  so  large  in  the  foreground  as  Massachusetts  tradition 
would  have  us  believe. 

It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  the  highest  literary  activity 
of  the  later  eighteenth  century  in  America  had  its  origin  at 
Yale  College.  The  most  eminent  of  the  men  of  letters  then 
developed  there  was  Timothy  Dwight,  a  grandson  of  Jonathan 
Edwards.  He  took  his  degree  in  1769,  and  remained  a  tutor 
at  Yale  until  1777.  He  then  became  for  a  year  a  chaplain  in 
the  Continental  Army.  While  tutor  at  Yale  he  co-operated 
with  his  colleague,  John  Trumbull,  in  the  production  of  some 
conventional  essays  modelled  on  the  "Spectator."  While 
chaplain  in  the  army  he  wrote  a  popular  song  entitled 
"Columbia."  Of  this  the  last  of  its  six  stanzas  is  a  suffi 
cient  example;  the  last  couplet  repeats  the  opening  words  of 
the  poem  :  — 

"Thus,  as  down  a  lone  valley,  with  cedars  o'erspread, 
From  war's  dread  confusion  I  pensively  strayed  — 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA,   1776-1800     121 

The  gloom  from  the  face  of  fair  heaven  retired ; 

The  winds  ceased  to  murmur;  the  thunders  expired; 

Perfumes,  as  of  Eden,  flowed  sweetly  along, 

And  a  voice,  as  of  angels,  enchantingly  sung ; 

'  Columbia,  Columbia,  to  glory  arise, 

The  queen  of  the  world,  and  the  child  of  the  skies.' " 

In  1783  Dwight  became  minister  of  Greenfield,  Connec 
ticut.  In  1795  he  was  made  President  of  Yale  College,  an 
office  which  he  held  to  his  death  in  1817  ;  and  certainly  until 
the  time  of  President  Woolsey  his  name  was  the  most  dis 
tinguished  in  the  academic  annals  of  Yale.  As  President,  he 
wrote  his  posthumously  published  "Travels  in  New  England 
and  New  York,"  which  record  experiences  during  a  number 
of  summer  journeys  and  remain  an  authority  on  the  condition 
of  those  regions  during  his  time.  He  did  some  sound  work 
in  theology  too ;  but  by  this  time  Calvinistic  theology  belongs 
apart  from  pure  letters  even  in  America.  In  1788,  however, 
he  expressed  some  of  his  ecclesiastical  views  in  a  poem  en 
titled  "  The  Triumph  of  Infidelity,"  of  which  one  passage  is 
well  worth  our  notice. 

To  appreciate  what  it  means  we  must  again  glance  for  a 
moment  at  Boston.  Here  for  a  century  the  pulpits  had  been 
steadily  tending  toward  liberalism.  Among  the  chief  churches 
of  Boston  was,  and  remains,  King's  Chapel,  the  official  place 
of  worship  of  the  royal  governors,  who  were  generally  mem 
bers  of  the  Church  of  England.  At  the  time  of  the  Revolu 
tion  the  ministers  of  this  communion,  whose  ordination  vows 
bound  them  to  personal  allegiance  just  as  firmly  as  to  the 
thirty-nine  articles,  generally  emigrated.  So  in  1785  King's 
Chapel  found  itself  in  charge  of  an  excellent  native  divine 
named  James  Freeman,  who  was  not  in  formal  communion  with 
the  English  Church.  For  legal  reasons,  said  to  be  connected 
with  endowments,  it  was  essential  that  the  services  of  King's 
Chapel  should  be  conducted  in  accordance  with  the  Anglican 
liturgy ;  but  in  view  of  the  new  state  of  sovereignty  in  Amer 
ica  this  liturgy  obviously  required  amendment.  Dr.  Freeman 


122  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

took  occasion  to  amend  it  pretty  radically.  In  the  liturgy 
which  has  been  employed  at  King's  Chapel  from  his  time  to 
our  own,  although  the  general  form  of  the  episcopal  service  is 
preserved  rather  more  nearly  than  the  episcopal  service  pre 
serves  that  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  there  is  occasional  avoid 
ance  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  In  consequence,  the  publication  of 
the  King's  Chapel  liturgy  has  sometimes  been  held  the  begin 
ning  of  the  Unitarian  movement  in  New  England.  Certainly, 
too,  along  with  this  insistence  on  the  unity  of  God,  as  distin 
guished  from  the  mysteries  of  Trinity,  Dr.  Freeman's  teaching 
tended  to  agree  with  that  which  has  since  been  fashionable  in 
Boston,  by  emphasising  the  more  amiable  as  distinguished  from 
the  more  terrible  aspects  of  Deity.  As  we  shall  see  later, 
the  theology  of  nineteenth-century  Massachusetts  has  occupied 
itself  in  so  thickly  freezing  over  the  Calvinistic  hell  that  to 
this  day  those  who  slide  about  on  its  surface,  particularly  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Harvard  College,  are  disposed  to  deny 
that  there  were  ever  any  brimstone  fires  at  all. 

To  the  orthodoxy  of  Yale  this  tendency  was  abhorrent ;  and 
Dwight's  "  Triumph  of  Infidelity  "  thus  attacks  the  type  of 
ecclesiastic  who  was  to  develop  into  such  eminent  spiritual 
leaders  as  Channing,  Emerson,  and  Phillips  Brooks :  — 

"  There  smiled  the  smooth  Divine,  unused  to  wound 
The  sinner's  heart,  with  hell's  alarming  sound. 
No  terrors  on  his  gentle  tongue  attend  ; 
No  grating  truths  the  nicest  ear  offend. 
That  strange  new-birth,  that  methodistic  grace, 
Nor  in  his  heart  nor  sermons  found  a  place. 
Plato's  fine  tales  he  clumsily  retold, 
Trite,  fireside,  moral  seesaws,  dull  as  old; 
His  Christ  and  Bible  placed  at  good  remove, 
Guilt  hell-deserving,  and  forgiving  love. 
'T  was  best  he  said,  mankind  should  cease  to  sin  : 
Good  fame  required  it :  so  did  peace  within. 
Their  honours,  well  he  knew,  would  ne'er  be  driven ; 
But  hoped  they  still  would  please  to  go  to  heaven. 
Each  week  he  paid  his  visitation  dues  ; 
Coaxed,  jested,  laughed ;  rehearsed  the  private  news ; 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA,   1776-1800     123 

Smoked  with  each  goody,  thought  her  cheese  excelled; 
Her  pipe  he  lighted,  and  her  baby  held. 
Or  placed  in  some  great  town,  with  lacquered  shoes, 
Trim  wig,  and  trimmer  gown,  and  glistening  hose, 
He  bowed,  talked  politics,  learned  manners  mild  ; 
Most  meekly  questioned,  and  most  smoothly  smiled  ; 
At  rich  men's  jests  laughed  loud,  their  stories  praised ; 
Their  wives'  new  patterns  gazed,  and  gazed,  and  gazed ; 
Most  daintily  on  pampered  turkeys  dined; 
Nor  shrunk  with  fasting  nor  with  study  pined ; 
Yet  from  their  churches  saw  his  brethren  driven, 
Who  thundered  truth,  and  spoke  the  voice  of  heaven, 
Chilled  trembling  guilt,  in  Satan's  headlong  path, 
Charmed  the  feet  back,  and  roused  the  ear  of  death. 
'  Let  fools,'  he  cried  *  starve  on,  while  prudent  I 
Snug  in  my  nest  shall  live,  and  snug  shall  die.' " 

Good  sound  eighteenth-century  satire  this  of  Dwight's, 
expressing  vigorous  theologic  conservatism,  but  written,  as 
any  one  can  see,  in  the  traditional  manner  of  the  early  English 
eighteenth  century,  and  published  in  a  year  signalised  in  Eng 
land  by  a  collected  edition  of  the  poems  of  Burns.  American 
literature  still  lagged  behind  that  of  the  mother  country. 
Dwight  also  wrote  a  poem  called  "Greenfield  Hill,"  of  which 
the  name  is  remembered.  It  is  long,  tedious,  formal,  and 
turgid ;  but  it  indicates,  like  the  good  President's  travels,  that 
he  was  touched  by  a  sense  of  the  beauties  of  nature  in  his 
native  country. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  century  the  literary  group  of  which 
President  Dwight  is  the  most  memorable  figure  developed  into 
a  recognised  little  company,  designated  as  the  "  Hartford 
Wits  ;  "  for  most  of  them,  though  graduates  of  Yale,  lived  at 
one  time  or  another  in  the  old  capital  of  colonial  Connecticut. 
In  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  "  Library  of  American  Litera 
ture  "  a  special  section  is  given  to  these  "  Hartford  Wits,"  of 
whom  the  chief  are  said  to  have  been  :  John  Trumbull,  Lemuel 
Hopkins,  David  Humphreys,  Joel  Barlow,  Theodore  Dwight, 
M.  F.  Cogswell,  and  E.  H.  Smith.  Of  these  names  only  two, 
those  of  Trumbull  and  Barlow,  now  survive  even  in  tradition. 


124  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

Trumbull  was  on  the  whole  the  more  important.  Fie  was 
two  years  older  than  President  Dwight,  and  graduated  at  Yale 
in  1767,  two  years  before  him.  In  1769  he  co-operated  with 
him  in  publishing  that  series  of  essays  in  the  manner  of  the 
"Spectator."  From  1771  to  1773  he  was  a  tutor  at  Yale; 
afterwards  he  practised  law  in  New  Haven  and  in  Boston;  and 
in  1781  he  went  to  Hartford,  where  he  remained  as  lawyer 
and  later  as  Judge  of  the  Superior  Court  until  1819.  From 
1825  until  his  death  in  1831  he  lived  at  Detroit  in  Michigan. 
Trumbull's  principal  works  are  two  long  poems  in  the 
manner  of  "  Hudibras."  The  first,  entitled  the  "  Progress  of 
Dulness,"  and  written  between  1772  and  1774,  satirises  the 
state  of  clerical  education  in  a  manner  of  which  the  following 
extract  will  give  a  sufficient  example  :  — 

"  Our  hero's  wit  and  learning  now  may 
Be  proved  by  token  of  diploma, 
Of  that  diploma,  which  with  speed 
He  learns  to  construe  and  to  read; 
And  stalks  abroad  with  conscious  stride, 
In  all  the  airs  of  pedant  pride, 
With  passport  signed  for  wit  and  knowledge 
And  current  under  seal  of  college. 
Few  months  now  past,  he  sees  with  pain 
His  purse  as  empty  as  his  brain ; 
His  father  leaves  him  then  to  fate, 
And  throws  him  off,  as  useless  weight ; 
But  gives  him  good  advice,  to  teach 
A  school  at  first,  and  then  to  preach. 
Thou  reason'st  well ;  it  must  be  so ; 
For  nothing  else  thy  son  can  do. 
As  thieves  of  old,  t'  avoid  the  halter, 
Took  refuge  in  the  holy  altar, 
Oft  dulness  flying  from  disgrace 
Finds  safety  in  that  sacred  place  ; 
There  boldly  rears  his  head,  or  rests 
Secure  from  ridicule  or  jests; 
Where  dreaded  satire  may  not  dare 
Offend  his  wig's  extremest  hair ; 
Where  scripture  sanctifies  his  strains, 
And  reverence  hides  the  want  of  brains." 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA,   1776-1800     125 

TrumbulPs  other  Hudibrastic  work  is  a  mock  epic  entitled 
"  M'Fingal,"  written  between  1774  and  1782,  which  satirises 
the  follies  of  his  countrymen,  particularly  of  the  Tory  persua 
sion.  The  poem  had  great  popularity ;  it  is  said  to  have 
passed  through  more  than  thirty  editions.  A  taste  of  it  may 
be  had  from  the  following  description  of  how  M'Fingal,  a 
caricatured  Tory,  was  punished  by  a  patriot  mob  for  cutting 
down  a  Liberty  pole  :  — 

"  Forthwith  the  crowd  proceed  to  deck 
With  halter'd  noose  M'FingaPs  neck, 
While  he  in  peril  of  his  soul 
Stood  tied  half-hanging  to  the  pole ; 
Then  lifting  high  the  ponderous  jar, 
Pour'd  o'er  his  head  the  smoaking  tar. 
With  less  profusion  once  was  spread 
Oil  on  the  Jewish  monarch's  head, 
That  down  his  beard  and  vestments  ran, 
And  covered  all  his  outward  man. 
As  when  (so  Claudian  sings)  the  Gods 
And  earth-born  Giants  fell  at  odds, 
The  stout  Enceladus  in  malice 
Tore  mountains  up  to  throw  at  Pallas; 
And  while  he  held  them  o'er  his  head, 
The  river,  from  their  fountains  fed, 
Pour'd  down  his  back  its  copious  tide, 
And  wore  its  channels  in  his  hide : 
So  from  the  high-raised  urn  the  torrents 
Spread  down  his  side  their  various  currents ; 
His  flowing  wig,  as  next  the  brim, 
First  met  and  drank  the  sable  stream ; 
Adown  his  visage  stern  and  grave 
Roll'd  and  adhered  the  viscid  wave ; 
With  arms  depending  as  he  stood, 
Each  cup  capacious  holds  the  flood  ; 
From  nose  and  chin's  remotest  end 
The  tarry  icicles  descend  ; 
Till  all  o'erspread,  with  colors  gay, 
He  glittered  to  the  western  ray, 
Like  sleet-bound  trees  in  wintry  skies, 
Or  Lapland  idol  carved  in  ice. 
And  now  the  feather-bag  display'd 
Is  waved  in  triumph  o'er  his  head, 


126  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

And  clouds  him  o'er  with  feathers  missive, 

And  down  upon  the  tar,  adhesive  : 

Not  Maia's  son,  with  wings  for  ears, 

Such  plumage  round  his  visage  wears, 

Nor  Milton's  six-wing'd  angel  gathers 

Such  superfluity  of  feathers. 

Now  all  complete  appears  our  Squire, 

Like  Gorgon  or  Chimaera  dire  ; 

Nor  more  could  boast  on  Plato's  plan 

To  rank  among  the  race  of  man, 

Or  prove  his  claim  to  human  nature, 

As  a  two-legg'd  unfeather'd  creature." 

Now,  clearly,  this  is  not  "  Hudibras,"  any  more  than  John 
Trumbull,  the  respectable  and  scholarly  Connecticut  lawyer 
of  the  closing  eighteenth  century,  was  Samuel  Butler,  the  pro 
totype  of  Grub  Street  in  Restoration  London.  Most  histo 
rians  of  American  literature  who  have  touched  on  Trumbull 
have  accordingly  devoted  themselves  to  emphasising  the  dif 
ference  between  "  M'Fingal  "  and  "  Hudibras."  For  our  pur 
poses  the  likeness  between  the  poems  seems  more  significant. 
Butler  died,  poor  and  neglected,  in  1680;  Trumbull  was  pros 
perously  alive  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  later;  and  yet  an 
intelligent  reader  might  easily  mistake  many  verses  of  the  latter 
for  verses  of  the  former.  Trumbull's  are  less  clever,  more 
decent,  and  doubtless  distinguishable  in  various  more  profound 
ways ;  but  the  two  poems  are  so  much  alike  as  to  indicate  in 
the  cleverest  American  satirist  of  the  closing  eighteenth  century 
a  temper  essentially  like  that  of  the  cleverest  English  satirist  of 
a  century  before.  Butler  was  born  less  than  ten  years  after 
Queen  Elizabeth  died,  and  Trumbull  only  ten  years  before  the 
accession  of  King  George  III.  It  is  hardly  unreasonable  to 
find  in  these  facts  a  fresh  indication  of  how  nearly  the 
native  temper  of  America  remained  like  that  of  the  first 
immigration. 

Joel  Barlow,  the  other  Hartford  Wit  who  is  still  faintly 
remembered,  was  rather  more  erratic.  He  was  born  in  1754. 
While  a  Yale  undergraduate  he  served  in  the  Continental 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA,   1776-1800     127 

Army,  in  which  he  was  afterward  a  chaplain,  from  1780  to 
1783.  In  1786  he  became  a  lawyer  at  Hartford,  where  he 
was  later  the  editor  of  a  weekly  newspaper;  and  in  1787  he 
published  an  epic  poem  entitled  "  The  Vision  of  Columbus," 
which  by  1807  had  been  elaborated  into  "The  Columbiad." 
Here  is  a  bit  of  it :  — 

"  Based  on  its  rock  of  Right  your  empire  lies, 
On  walls  of  wisdom  let  the  fabric  rise  ; 
Preserve  your  principles,  their  force  unfold, 
Let  nations  prove  them  and  let  kings  behold. 
EQUALITY,  your  first  firm-grounded  stand ; 
Then  FREE  ELECTION  ;  then  your  FEDERAL  BAND ; 
This  holy  Triad  should  forever  shine 
The  great  compendium  of  all  rights  divine, 
Creed  of  all  schools,  whence  youths  by  millions  draw 
Their  themes  of  right,  their  decalogues  of  law ; 
Till  men  shall  wonder  (in  these  codes  inured) 
How  wars  were  made,  how  tyrants  were  endured." 

Even  in  its  first  form  this  turgid  epic,  which  few  mortals  now 
living  have  more  than  glanced  at,  was  the  most  ambitious 
attempt  at  serious  literature  which  had  appeared  in  the  United 
States.  To  this  day,  furthermore,  a  quarto  edition  of  "  The 
Columbiad  "  is  among  the  most  impressive  books  to  look  at  in 
the  world.  It  brought  Barlow  political  influence.  He  went 
abroad,  first  as  a  sort  of  business  agent,  and  had  something  to 
do  with  politics  in  both  France  and  England.  From  1795  to 
1797  he  was  United  States  Consul  at  Algiers.  From  1797 
to  1805  ne  lived  in  Paris;  from  1805  to  1811  in  Wash 
ington.  In  1811  he  was  made  United  States  minister  to 
France,  in  which  character  he  journeyed  to  meet  Napoleon  in 
Russia;  becoming  involved  in  the  retreat  from  Moscow,  he 
died  from  exhaustion  at  a  Polish  village  on  Christmas  Eve, 
1812. 

Though  "  The  Columbiad "  was  Barlow's  most  serious 
work,  his  most  agreeable  was  a  comic  poem  entitled  ct  The 
Hasty  Pudding."  This,  written  while  he  was  abroad  in  1793, 


128  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

is  a  humorous  lament  that  Europe  lacks  a  delicacy  of  the 
table  which,  with  the  Atlantic  between  them,  he  remembered 
tenderly.  A  few  lines  will  sufficiently  exemplify  his  rather 
heavy  humour :  — 

"There  is  a  choice  in  spoons.     Though  small  appear 
The  nice  distinction,  yet  to  me  't  is  clear, 
The  deep  bowl'd  Gallic  spoon,  contrived  to  scoop 
In  ample  draughts  the  thin  diluted  soup, 
Performs  not  well  in  those  substantial  things, 
Whose  mass  adhesive  to  the  metal  clings ; 
Where  the  strong  labial  muscles  must  embrace, 
The  gentle  curve  and  sweep  the  hollow  space. 
With  ease  to  enter  and  discharge  the  freight, 
A  bowl  less  concave,  but  still  more  dilate, 
Becomes  the  pudding  best.     The  shape,  the  size, 
A  secret  rests,  unknown  to  vulgar  eyes. 
Experienced  feeders  can  alone  impart 
A  rule  so  much  above  the  lore  of  art. 
These  tuneful  lips  that  thousand  spoons  have  tried, 
With  just  precision  could  the  point  decide. 
Though  not  in  song ;  the  muse  but  poorly  shines 
In  cones,  in  cubes,  and  geometric  lines  ; 
Yet  the  true  form,  as  near  as  she  can  tell, 
Is  that  small  section  of  a  goose  egg  shell, 
Which  in  two  equal  portions  shall  divide 
The  distance  from  the  centre  to  the  side. 
Fear  not  to  slaver  ;  't  is  no  deadly  sin  :  — 
Like  the  free  Frenchman,  from  your  joyous  chin 
Suspend  the  ready  napkin;  or  like  me, 
Poise  with  one  hand  your  bowl  upon  your  knee ; 
Just  in  the  zenith  your  wise  head  project, 
Your  full  spoon,  rising  in  a  line  direct, 
Bold  as  a  bucket,  heed  no  drops  that  fall, 
The  wide  mouth'd  bowl  will  surely  catch  them  all !  " 

Such  was  Barlow  at  his  best.  The  other  Hartford  Wits 
may  be  judged  by  an  extract  from  lc  The  Political  Green 
house,"  written  by  Alsop,  Theodore  Dwight,  and  Hopkins, 
in  1799;  they  apostrophised  Bonaparte  as  follows  :  — 

"  Ambitious  Chief  !  in  dust  laid  low, 
Behold  the  honours  of  thy  brow, 


JTERATURE  IN  AMERICA,  1776-1800     129 

The  laurels  culled  on  Egypt's  shore 
Shall  wither  ere  the  day  be  o'er; 
Thy  armies  thinned,  reduced  thy  force, 
Fell  ruin  waits  thine  onward  course, 
While  of  thy  country's  aid  bereft, 
No  safety  but  in  flight  is  left, 
And  victory's  self  but  seals  thy  doom, 
And  brings  thee  nearer  to  the  tomb. 
I  see  destruction  wing  her  way, 
I  see  the  eagles  mark  their  prey, 
Where  pent  in  Cairo's  putrid  wall, 
In  heaps  thy  dying  soldiers  fall; 
Or,  mid  the  desert's  burning  waste, 
Smote  by  the  Samiel's  fiery  blast ; 
Or  pressed  by  fierce  Arabian  bands, 
With  thirst  they  perish  on  the  sands. 
While  Bonaparte's  dreaded  name 
Shall  shine  a  beacon's  warning  flame, 
To  point  to  times  of  future  date 
Unprincipled  ambition's  fate." 


Certainly  prophetic  of  what  twelve  or  fifteen  years  later 
befell  Napoleon,  who  at  this  time  was  just  beginning  his 
imperial  career,  this  extract,  together  with  those  which  we 
have  considered  from  Dwight,  Trumbull,  and  Barlow,  may 
suffice  to  exemplify  the  first  literary  efflorescence  of  our 
country ;  and  a  good  Harvard  man,  not  free  from  some  of  the 
prejudices  which  are  the  price  of  a  Harvard  education,  lately 
remarked  in  speaking  of  the  Hartford  Wits  that  they  repre 
sent  the  only  considerable  efflorescence  of  Yale.  Perhaps 
they  do  ;  and  very  clearly  they  contribute  nothing  memorable 
to  the  wisdom  of  the  eternities.  The  answer  which  was  made 
to  that  complacent  Harvard  man  is  nevertheless  true :  at 
the  time  when  the  Hartford  Wits  wrote,  no  Harvard  man  had 
produced  literature  half  so  good  as  theirs.  They  made  an 
intensely  spirited  effort,  serious  in  purpose  even  if  sometimes 
light  in  form,  to  create  in  our  new  country  a  literature  which 
should  assert  national  independence  as  surely  as  that  indepen 
dence  had  been  asserted  in  politics.  The  result  was  patriotic, 

9 


1 30  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

it  was  not  without  humour,  it  had  all  sorts  of  quali  ies  of 
which  one  may  speak  respectfully ;  and  they  did  their  very 
best.  This  best,  however,  proved  thoroughly  imitative,  and  at 
the  same  time  full  of  indications  that  its  writers  lacked  that 
peculiar  fusion  of  thought  and  feeling  which  made  English 
character  in  the  eighteenth  century  such  as  could  fitly  be  ex 
pressed  by  the  kind  of  literature  which  the  Hartford  Wits 
so  courageously  attempted.  An  heroic,  patriotic  effort  they 
stand  for,  and  one  made  with  enthusiasm,  wit,  and  courage. 
Nobody  can  fairly  hold  them  to  blame  for  the  fact  that  their 
America  still  lacked  national  experience  ripe  for  expression  in 
a  form  which  should  be  distinctive. 

Contemporary  with  the  Hartford  Wits  was  a  much  less 
eminent  man,  until  lately  almost  forgotten,  whose  memory  is 
now  beginning  to  revive.  In  one  or  two  of  his  poems,  it  now 
seems  probable,  we  can  find  more  literary  merit  than  in  any 
other  work  produced  in  America  before  the  nineteenth  century. 
His  name  was  Philip  Freneau.  Of  French-Huguenot  descent, 
the  son  of  a  New  York  wine  merchant,  he  was  born  in  that 
city  on  the  2d  of  January,  1752.  He  was  educated  at 
Princeton,  and  having  taken  to  the  sea,  was  captured  by  the 
British  during  the  Revolution  and  passed  some  time  on  a 
prison  ship  near  New  York.  After  the  Revolution  he  resumed 
his  mercantile  career.  In  1791  he  became  the  editor  of  a  very 
radical  newspaper  in  Philadelphia.  In  1798  he  took  to  the 
sea  again ;  and  the  rest  of  his  life  has  no  significance  for  us. 
He  died  in  New  Jersey  in  1832. 

Freneau  was  a  man  of  strong  feeling,  ardently  in  sympathy 
with  the  Revolution,  and  intensely  democratic.  As  a  journal 
ist,  then,  he  was  a  sharp  and  bitter  opponent  of  any  attempt 
on  the  part  either  of  England  or  of  the  more  prudent  class  in 
his  own  country  to  assert  authority ;  and  a  considerable  part 
of  his  poetry,  of  which  he  supervised  at  least  four  separate 
editions  between  1786  and  1815,  consists  of  rather  reckless 
satire,  not  conspicuously  better  or  worse  than  much  other 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA,  1776-1800     131 

satire  of  the  period.  Our  bare  outline  of  his  life,  however, 
which  omits  many  details, —  for  one  thing,  he  resided  for  a 
while  in  the  West  Indies,  where  he  was  much  stirred  by  the 
horrors  of  slavery,  —  indicates  one  characteristic  fact.  The 
son  of  a  New  York  man  of  business,  educated  at  a  thor 
oughly  respectable  college,  he  became  both  a  practical  sailor 
and  a  journalist.  Now,  in  George  III.'s  England  a  man  who 
was  either  scholar,  sailor,  or  journalist  was  apt  to  be  nothing 
else ;  but  in  America  to  this  day  such  a  career  as  Freneau's 
remains  far  from  unusual.  Far  from  unusual,  too,  it  would 
have  been  in  the  England  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  —  of  which 
probably  the  most  typical  personage  was  Walter  Ralegh,  sol 
dier,  sailor,  statesman,  adventurer,  chemist,  historian,  coloniser, 
poet,  and  a  dozen  things  else.  Ralegh's  career  was  one  of 
unsurpassed  magnificence ;  Freneau's  in  comparison  seems 
petty.  In  both,  however,  one  can  see  the  common  fact  that 
a  man  whose  life  was  intensely  and  variously  busy  found  him 
self  instinctively  stirred  to  poetic  expression. 

The  greater  part  of  Freneau's  poetry,  to  be  sure,  was 
occasional.  On  his  satires  we  have  touched  already.  Here 
is  an  example  of  his  patriotic  verse :  — 

"  At  Eutaw  Springs  the  valiant  died  : 

Their  limbs  with  dust  are  covered  o'er ; 
Weep  on,  ye  springs,  your  tearful  tide  ; 
How  many  heroes  are  no  more ! 

Here  is  another,  from  a  poem  tc  On  Barney's  Victory  over 
the  Ship  '  General  Monk '"  : - 

"  Lo !  I  see  their  van  appearing  — 

Back  our  top-sails  to  the  mast ! 
They  toward  us  full  are  steering 

With  a  gentle  western  blast : 
I  Ve  a  list  of  all  their  cargoes, 

All  their  guns,  and  all  their  men : 
I  am  sure  these  modern  Argo's 

Can't  escape  us  one  in  ten : 


132  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

"  Yonder  comes  the  Charming  Sally 

Sailing  with  the  General  Greene  — 
First  we  '11  fight  the  Hyder  Ally, 

Taking  her  is  taking  them  : 
She  intends  to  give  us  battle, 

Bearing  down  with  all  her  sail  — 
Now,  boys,  let  our  cannon  rattle  ! 

To  take  her  we  cannot  fail." 

However  interesting  such  verse  may  be  historically,  it  is  not 
of  the  kind  which  rises  above  the  dust  of  the  centuries.  Now 
and  then,  however,  Freneau  struck  a  note  different  from  this, 
and  different  on  the  whole  from  any  which  had  previously  been 
sounded  in  America.  His  most  generally  recognised  poem 
is  that  on  u  The  Indian  Burying-Ground,"  to  which  atten 
tion  has  been  called  by  the  fact  that  Thomas  Campbell,  in 
"  O'Connor's  Child,"  stole  one  of  its  lines.  Campbell's 
verse  runs  as  follows  :  — 

"  Bright  as  the  bow  that  spans  the  storm, 

In  Erin's  vesture  clad, 
A  son  of  light,  a  lovely  form, 

He  comes  and  makes  her  glad. 
Now  on  the  grass-green  turf  he  sits, 

His  tasselled  horn  beside  him  laid  ; 
Now  o'er  the  hills  in  chase  he  flits  — 

The  hunter  and  the  deer  —  a  shade." 

Freneau's  poem  is  worth  quoting  in  full :  — 

"  In  spite  of  all  the  learned  have  said, 

I  still  my  old  opinion  keep ; 
The  posture  that  we  give  the  dead 
Points  out  the  soul's  eternal  sleep. 

"  Not  so  the  ancients  of  these  lands  ;  — 
The  Indian,  when  from  life  released, 
Again  is  seated  with  his  friends, 
And  shares  again  the  joyous  feast. 

"  His  imaged  birds,  and  painted  bowl, 

And  venison,  for  a  journey  dressed, 
Bespeak  the  nature  of  the  soul, 
Activity,  that  wants  no  rest. 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA,   1776-1800     133 

"  His  bow  for  action  ready  bent, 

And  arrows,  with  a  head  of  stone, 
Can  only  mean  that  life  is  spent, 
And  not  the  old  ideas  gone. 

"  Thou,  stranger,  that  shalt  come  this  way, 

No  fraud  upon  the  dead  commit,  — 
Observe  the  swelling  turf,  and  say, 
They  do  not  lie,  but  here  they  sit. 

"  Here  still  a  lofty  rock  remains, 

On  which  the  curious  eye  may  trace 
(Now  wasted  half  by  wearing  rains) 
The  fancies  of  a  ruder  race. 


"  Here  still  an  aged  elm  aspires, 

Beneath  whose  far  projecting  shade 
(And  which  the  shepherd  still  admires) 
The  children  of  the  forest  played. 

"  There  oft  a  restless  Indian  queen 

(Pale  Shebah  with  her  braided  hair) 
And  many  a  barbarous  form  is  seen 
To  chide  the  man  that  lingers  there. 

"  By  midnight  moons,  o'er  moistening  dews, 

In  habit  for  the  chase  arrayed, 
The  hunter  still  the  deer  pursues, 
The  hunter  and  the  deer  —  a  shade ! 

"  And  long  shall  timorous  Fancy  see 

The  painted  chief  and  pointed  spear. 
And  Reason's  self  shall  bow  the  knee 
To  shadows  and  delusions  here." 


In  the  genuineness  and  simplicity  of  these  verses,  there  is 
true  beauty.  In  the  opening  thought,  that  it  were  better  for 
the  alert  dead  to  sit  than  to  lie  drowsing,  —  that  Hie  sedet  were 
a  better  epitaph  than  Hie  jacet, — there  is  something  really  im 
aginative.  And  in  the  pensive  melancholy  with  which  Freneau 
records  the  rock-tracings  of  the  vanished  natives  of  America, 


134  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

there  is  likeness  to  the  motive  of  a  poem  which  twelve  years 
before  Freneau  died  permanently  enriched  English  literature. 
This  is  John  Keats's  "  Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn,"  published 
in  1820:  — 

"  Heard  melodies  are  sweet,  but  those  unheard 

Are  sweeter ;  therefore,  ye  soft  pipes,  play  on ; 
Not  to  the  sensual  ear,  but,  more  endear'd, 

Pipe  to  the  spirit  ditties  of  no  tone : 
Fair  youth,  beneath  the  trees,  thou  canst  not  leave 

Thy  song,  nor  ever  can  those  trees  be  bare ; 
Bold  Lover,  never,  never  canst  thou  kiss, 

Though  winning  near  the  goal  —  yet,  do  not  grieve ; 
She  cannot  fade,  though  thou  hast  not  thy  bliss, 

For  ever  wilt  thou  love,  and  she  be  fair  !  " 

Here,  of  course,  is  no  such  plagiarism  as  that  of  Campbell, 
who  stole  a  whole  line  of  Freneau's ;  no  such  plagiarism, 
either,  as  that  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  who  stole  another ;  nor 
yet  such  as  that  still  more  unprincipled  one  which  Professor 
Tyler  records,  where  an  English  lady  printed  as  her  own  a 
poem  of  Freneau  in  full.  It  may  fairly  be  doubted  whether 
Keats  ever  saw  a  line  of  Freneau's,  or  ever  heard  his  name. 
The  contrast  between  Freneau's  "  Indian  Burying-Ground  " 
and  Keats's  u  Grecian  Urn  "  is  worth  our  attention  only  be 
cause  both  poets  had  a  similar  motive.  Freneau  expressed  it 
simply,  directly,  and  even  beautifully  ;  Keats  expressed  it  im 
mortally.  The  contrast  is  one  between  good  literature  and 
great,  between  the  very  best  that  America  had  produced  in 
the  closing  years  of*  the  eighteenth  century  and  one  of  the 
many  excellent  things  which  England  produced  during  the 
first  twenty  years  of  the  century  that  followed.  Taken  by 
itself,  u  The  Indian  Burying-Ground  "  may  fairly  excite  our 
patriotic  enthusiasm  to  an  excessive  degree ;  a  comparison 
with  the  "Grecian  Urn"  may  recall  our  patriotism  to  the 
limits  of  common-sense. 

The  literature  produced  in  this  country  between  the  out 
break  of  the  American  Revolution  and  the  close  of  the 


LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA,   1776-1800     135 

eighteenth  century  may  fairly  be  typified,  if  not  precisely  sum 
marised,  by  what  we  have  glanced  at,  —  the  writings  of  those 
orators  and  public  men  who  reached  their  highest  expression 
in  the  u  Federalist,"  the  conscious  and  imitative  effort  of  the 
Hartford  Wits,  and  the  sporadic  poetry  of  Philip  Freneau. 


IX 


SUMMARY 


WE  have  now  glanced  at  the  literary  history  of  America 
during  the  first  two  centuries  of  American  existence.  In  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  century  of  immigration,  when  Ameri 
cans  felt  themselves  truly  to  be  emigrant  Englishmen,  they  ex 
pressed  themselves  only  in  such  theological  and  historical 
work  as  may  be  typified  by  the  "  Magnalia  "  of  Cotton  Mather. 
During  the  eighteenth  century,  the  century  of  independence, 
when  Americans  felt  themselves  still  Englishmen,  but  with 
no  personal  ties  to  England,  America  produced  in  literature  a 
theology  which  ran  to  metaphysical  extremes,  such  vigorous 
common  sense  as  one  finds  in  the  varied  works  of  Franklin, 
and  such  writings  as  we  have  glanced  at  since.  These  two 
centuries  added  to  English  literature  the  names  of  Shakspere, 
Milton,  Dryden,  Swift,  Addison,  Pope,  Johnson,  and  Burns. 
To  match  these  names  in  America  we  can  find  none  more 
eminent  than  those  of  Cotton  Mather,  Edwards,  Franklin, 
the  writers  of  the  "  Federalist,"  the  Hartford  Wits,  and 
Freneau.  As  we  have  seen,  the  history  of  England  during 
these  two  centuries  was  that  of  a  steadily  developing  and  in 
creasing  national  experience.  In  comparison,  the  history  of 
America  reveals  national  inexperience.  There  is  no  need  for 
further  emphasis  on  the  commonplace  that  lack  of  experience 
does  not  favour  literary  or  artistic  expression. 


BOOK  III 

THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 


BOOK    III 
THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

I 

ENGLISH    HISTORY    SINCE    l8oO 

IN  1800  King  George  III.,  who  had  been  forty  years  on  the 
throne,  was  lapsing  into  that  melancholy  madness  in  which  his 
sixty  years  of  royalty  closed.  The  last  ten  years  of  his  reign 
were  virtually  part  of  his  successor's,  the  Prince  Regent, 
afterward  George  IV.  In  1830  King  William  IV.  succeeded 
his  brother;  his  reign  lasted  only  seven  years.  Since  1837  the 
sovereign  of  England  has  been  Queen  Victoria.  During  the 
nineteenth  century,  then,  only  three  English  sovereigns  came 
to  the  throne.  It  chances  that  each  of  these  represents  a  dis 
tinct  phase  of  English  history. 

The  Regency,  under  which  general  name  we  may  for  the 
moment  include  also  the  reign  of  George  IV.,  was  the  time 
when  the  insular  isolation  of  England  was  most  pronounced. 
In  1798  Nelson  won  the  battle  of  the  Nile.  No  incident 
more  definitely  marks  the  international  position  of  England 
as  the  chief  conservative  defender  of  such  traditions  as  for  a 
while  seemed  fatally  threatened  by  the  French  Revolution 
becoming  incarnate  in  Napoleon.  During  the  first  fifteen 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  conflict  persisted,  more 
and  more  isolating  England  and  emphasising  English  con 
servatism.  In  1805,  Trafalgar,  which  finally  destroyed  the 
sea  power  of  Napoleon,  made  the  English  Channel  more  than 
ever  a  frontier  separating  England  from  the  rest  of  Europe. 


140  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

It  was  not  until  ten  years  later,  in  1815,  that  Waterloo, 
finally  overthrowing  Napoleon,  made  room  for  the  reaction 
which  overran  continental  Europe  for  thirty  years  to  come; 
and  only  then  could  England  begin  to  relax  that  insularity 
which  the  Napoleonic  wars  had  so  developed  in  English 
temper.  England  is  the  only  country  of  civilised  Europe 
where  Napoleon  never  succeeded  in  planting  his  power;  only 
English  soil  remained  free  from  his  invasion;  and  during  the 
first  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  price  which  England 
paid  for  this  freedom  was  an  unprecedented  concentration  of 
her  own  life  within  her  own  bounds.  This  era  of  dogged 
resistance  to  the  French  Revolution  finally  developed  the 
traditional  type  of  John  Bull. 

To  suppose  that  England  remained  unmoved  by  revolu 
tionary  fervour,  however,  would  be  a  complete  mistake.  Two 
years  after  William  IV.  ascended  the  throne,  there  occurred 
in  English  politics  an  incident  as  revolutionary  as  any  which 
ever  took  place  in  France.  The  results  of  it  have  long  since 
altered  the  whole  nature  of  English  life,  social  and  political. 
Although  revolutionary  in  purpose,  however,  and  in  ultimate 
effect  rather  more  successfully  revolutionary  than  any  convul 
sion  of  continental  Europe,  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  was 
carried  through  in  England  by  formally  constitutional  means. 
This  Bill  permanently  altered  the  theory  and  practice  of 
suffrage  in  England,  establishing  the  broadly  democratic  prin 
ciple  that  representation  in  the  House  of  Commons  shall  be 
apportioned  to  the  population.  To  the  conservative  temper 
of  the  time  nothing  could  have  been  more  abhorrent  than 
parliamentary  reform.  The  fact  that  under  the  old  system 
the  House  of  Commons  had  worked  admirably  seemed  reason 
enough  why  there  should  be  no  change ;  the  principles  on 
which  reform  was  urged  involved  something  like  recognition 
of  those  abstract  rights  which  even  to  the  present  day  remain 
foreign  to  the  most  characteristic  temper  of  England.  Un 
doubtedly  the  consequent  opposition  of  the  better  classes  was 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  141 

blindly  prejudiced.  The  reformed  Parliaments,  newly  re 
formed  more  than  once  since  1832,  have  worked  far  better 
than  the  opponents  of  reform  expected;  but  in  the  minds  of 
many  competent  judges  it  is  still  an  open  question  whether  as 
agents  of  government  they  have  worked  so  well  as  the  Parlia 
ments  which  came  before.  The  old  system,  where  a  great 
gentleman  often  carried  half  a  dozen  boroughs  in  his  pocket, 
made  it  easy  to  find  a  seat  in  the  House  for  any  young  man 
of  promise ;  to  go  no  further,  it  was  to  this  system  that  we 
owe  the  parliamentary  career  of  Burke.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  with  the  progress  of  democratic  temper  in  England 
the  House  of  Commons  has  tended  personally  to  deteriorate. 
No  doubt  there  are  aspects  in  which  the  new  system  seems 
more  just  than  the  old ;  but  there  are  aspects,  too,  in  which 
the  old  seems  to  have  been  the  safer.  Such  speculations  as 
this,  however,  are  fruitless ;  the  Reform  Bill  is  a  fact ;  and  the 
thing  for  us  to  remark  about  it  is  that  this  virtual  revolution 
in  England  was  accomplished  constitutionally.  In  brief,  what 
happened  was  this.  The  House  of  Lords,  the  more  conser 
vative  chamber  of  Parliament,  was  unprepared  to  pass  the 
Reform  Bill ;  the  House  of  Commons,  representing,  it  believed, 
the  ardent  conviction  of  the  country,  was  determined  that  the 
Bill  should  be  passed.  Thereupon  the  King  was  persuaded 
to  inform  the  Lords  that  in  case  they  persisted  in  voting 
against  the  measure  he  should  create  new  peers  enough  to 
make  a  majority  of  the  House.  This  threat  brought  the  con 
servative  peers  to  terms.  They  did  not  vote  for  the  measure, 
but  under  the  leadership  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  they 
walked  out  of  the  house  in  silent  protest.  A  revolutionary 
threat  on  the  part  of  the  King  had  accomplished  under  consti 
tutional  forms  a  peaceful  revolution. 

Five  years  later  King  William  IV.  was  dead.  Then  began 
the  reign  of  the  most  tenderly  human  sovereign  in  English 
history.  For  sixty-two  years,  in  the  full  blaze  of  public  life, 
she  has  unfalteringly  done  what  she  has  deemed  her  duty. 


I42  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

This  devoted  conscientiousness  has  strengthened  English  roy 
alty  beyond  words.  Through  sixty  years  of  growing  democracy 
the  fact  that  the  throne  of  England  has  been  filled  by  Queen 
Victoria  has  gone  far  to  re-establish  in  popular  esteem  a  form 
of  government  which  it  is  the  fashion  to  call  a  thing  of  the 
past.  : 

In  general  this  Victorian  era  has  been  peaceful,  but  still 
one  which  is  best  typified  by  the  newest  title  of  its  sovereign. 
For  during  the  last  sixty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  Eng 
land  has  been  quietly  asserting  itself  no  longer  as  an  isolated 
kingdom,  but  as  a  world-empire.  This  imperialism  of  Eng 
land  seems  different  from  any  other  which  has  declared  itself 
since  the  pristine  empire  of  Rome.  It  stands  not  for  the  as 
sertion  of  central  and  despotic  authority,  but  rather  for  the 
maintenance  of  those  legal  traditions  which  evince  the  elas 
ticity  of  still  unbroken  vitality.  For,  speaking  broadly,  the 
English  Common  Law  is  a  system,  not  of  rules,  but  of  prin 
ciples.  Its  fundamental  notion  is  that  the  world  should  be 
governed  by  established  custom.  So  long  as  its  influence  was 
confined  to  the  island  where  it  was  developed,  to  be  sure,  it 
still  seemed  impracticably  rigid.  The  American  Revolution, 
however,  taught  England  a  lesson  which  has  been  thoroughly 
learned,  —  that  when  English  authority  asserts  itself  in  foreign 
regions,  the  true  spirit  of  the  Common  Law  should  recognise 
and  maintain  all  local  customs  which  do  not  conflict  with 
public  good.  In  India,  for  example,  local  custom  sanctioned 
many  things  essentially  abominable, —  murder,  self-immolation, 
and  the  like.  Such  crimes  against  civilisation  the  English 
power  has  condemned  and  repressed.  Harmless  local  custom, 
on  the  other  hand,  —  freedom  of  worship,  peculiarities  of  land 
tenure,  and  whatever  harmonises  with  public  order,  —  the 
English  government  has  maintained  as  strenuously  as  in  Eng 
land  itself  it  has  maintained  the  customs  peculiar  to  the 
mother  country.  So  in  Canada  it  has  maintained  a  hundred 
forms  of  old  French  law  ancestral  to  those  provinces.  So  in 


ENGLISH  HISTORY  143 

Australia  it  has  maintained  many  new  systems  and  customs 
which  have  grown  up  in  a  colony  settled  since  the  American 
Revolution.  Its  modern  state  is  typified  by  the  fact  that  in 
the  judicial  committee  of  the  Privy  Council  —  whose  functions 
resemble  those  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  — 
there  are  now  regularly  members  from  Canada,  from  India, 
from  Australia,  to  pronounce  in  this  court  of  appeal  on  ques 
tions  referred  to  the  mother  country  from  parts  of  the  empire 
where  the  actual  law  differs  from  that  of  England  herself. 

The  Victorian  epoch,  then,  has  begun  to  explain  the  true 
spirit  of  the  English  law  :  whatever  the  letter,  this  spirit  main 
tains  that  throughout  the  empire,  and  all  the  places  where  the 
imperial  influence  extends,  the  whole  force  of  England  shall 
sustain  the  differing  rights  and  traditions  which  have  proved 
themselves,  for  the  regions  where  they  have  grown,  sound, 
safe,  and  favourable  to  civilised  prosperity.  The  growing 
flexibility  of  English  government  has  tended  to  make  domi 
nant  in  many  parts  of  the  world  the  language  and  the  ideals 
which  we  share  with  England.  The  progress  of  imperial 
England,  then,  frequently  misrepresented,  as  though  it  were 
mere  selfish  aggression,  is  really  a  phase  of  a  world-conflict 
which  the  acceleration  of  intercommunication  —  steam  travel 
and  the  electric  telegraph  —  has  at  last  made  inevitable.  Be 
yond  doubt  war  is  terrible ;  one  of  our  own  generals  in  the 
Civil  War  is  said  to  have  declared  that  "War  is  Hell." 
At  least  to  the  traditional  American  mind,  however,  hell 
hardly  yet  presents  itself  as  a  thing  which  unaided  human 
ingenuity  can  certainly  avoid  ;  and  when  war  means  that  the 
progress  of  the  moral,  legal,  and  political  ideals  which  we 
share  with  England  either  must  be  checked  or  must  domi 
nate  by  armed  force,  minds  loyal  to  our  ancestral  traditions 
may  fairly  begin  to  question  whether  tame  peace  is  not  worse 
still. 

Historically,  then,  England  began  the  century  as  an  isolated 
conservative  power.     In  the  reign  of  King  William   IV.   it 


i44  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

underwent  a  revolution  which  its  ancestral  legal  forms  proved 
strong  and  flexible  enough  to  accomplish  without  convulsion 
or  bloodshed  ;  and  during  the  long  reign  of  Queen  Victoria 
it  has  been  more  and  more  widely  asserting  the  imperial 
dominion  of  the  flexibly  vital  traditions  of  our  Common 
Law. 


II 

ENGLISH    LITERATURE    SINCE    l8oO 

So  we  come  to  the  literature  of  England  during  the  nineteenth 
century.  By  chance  several  dates  which  we  have  /named  for 
other  purposes  are  significant  in  literary  history  as  well  as  in 
political.  In  1798,  when  Nelson  fought  the  battle  of  the 
Nile,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  published  their  famous  vol 
ume  of  u  Lyrical  Ballads."  This  little  book  is  commonly 
regarded  as  the  first  important  expression  of  that  romantic 
outburst  of  poetry  which  substituted  for  the  formal  literary 
traditions  of  the  eighteenth  century  those  traditions  of  individ 
ual  artistic  freedom  which  have  persisted  until  the  present  time. 
In  brief,  the  literary  emancipation  of  England,  amid  blind 
political  conservatism,  was  almost  as  marked  as  the  literary 
conservatism  of  France,  amid  revolutionary  political  changes. 
The  spirit  of  revolution  was  everywhere  abroad  ;  but  in  Eng 
land  it  more  profoundly  influenced  phrase  than  conduct,  while 
in  France  the  case  was  just  the  reverse.  In  1832,  the  year 
of  the  Reform  Bill,  Scott  died ;  Byron,  Shelley,  and  Keats 
were  already  dead  ;  so  was  Miss  Austen ;  and  every  literary 
reputation  contemporary  with  theirs  was  finally  established. 

Broadly  speaking,  the  period  of  English  literature  which 
began  with  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads "  and  ended  with  the  death 
of  Scott  may  be  divided  at  1815,  the  year  of  Waterloo.  The 
chief  expression  which  preceded  this  was  a  passionate  outburst 
of  romantic  poetry,  maintaining  in  widely  various  forms  the 
revolutionary  principle  that  the  individual,  freed  from  acciden 
tal  and  conventional  trammels,  may  be  trusted  to  tend  toward 
righteousness ;  that  human  nature  is  not  essentially  evil  but 
excellent;  and  that  sin,  evil,  and  pain  are  brought  into  being 


146  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

by  those  distortions  of  such  human  nature  which  are  wrought 
by  hampering,  outworn  custom  and  superstition.  Though  this 
philosophy  may  never  have  been  precisely  or  fully  set  forth 
by  any  one  of  the  English  poets  who  flourished  between 
1800  and  1815,  it  pervades  the  work  of  all;  and  this  work 
taken  together  is  the  most  memorable  body  of  poetry  in  our 
language,  except  the  Elizabethan.  So  far  as  one  can  now  tell, 
this  school  distinguishes  itself  from  the  Elizabethan,  and  from 
almost  any  other  of  equal  merit  in  literary  history,  by  the 
eclectic  variety  of  its  individual  members ;  their  passionate 
devotion  to  the  ideal  of  freedom  in  both  thought  and  phrase 
made  these  new  poets  differ  from  one  another  almost  as  con 
spicuously  as  the  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  alike. 
For  all  this,  as  one  reads  them  now,  a  trait  common  through 
out  their  work  grows  salient.  Despite  the  fervour  of  their 
revolutionary  individualism,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  and 
Byron  and  Shelley  and  the  rest  agreed  in  eagerly  looking  for 
ward  to  an  enfranchised  future  in  which  this  world  was  to  be 
incalculably  better  and  nobler  than  in  the  tyrant-ridden  past. 
This  was  the  dominant  sentiment  of  English  literature  from 
the  battle  of  the  Nile  to  that  of  Waterloo. 

Between  Waterloo  and  the  Reform  Bill,  which  was  passed 
in  the  year  when  Scott  died,  a  new  phase  of  feeling  dominated 
the  literature  of  England.  Though  something  of  this  elder 
spirit  of  hope  lingered,  the  most  considerable  fact  was  the 
publication  of  all  but  the  first  two  of  the  Waverley  Novels. 
The  contrast  between  these  and  the  preceding  poetry  is  strongly 
marked.  What  gave  them  popularity  and  has  assured  them 
permanence  is  the  fervour  with  which  they  retrospectively  as 
sert  the  beauty  of  ideals  which  even  in  their  own  time  had 
almost  vanished.  If  the  first  outburst  of  English  literature  in 
the  nineteenth  century  was  a  poetry  animated  by  aspiration 
toward  an  ideal  future,  the  second  period  of  that  literature, 
embodied  in  the  novels  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  dwelt  in  carelessly 
dignified  prose  on  the  nobler  aspects  of  a  real  past. 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  147 

These  two  phases  of  English  literature  roughly  correspond 
with  the  Regency  and  the  reign  of  William  IV.  The  litera 
ture  which  has  ensued  will  probably  be  known  to  the  future 
as  Victorian ;  and  it  is  still  too  near  us  for  any  confident 
generalisation.  But  although  there  has  been  admirable  Vic 
torian  poetry,  of  which  the  most  eminent  makers  seem  to 
have  been  Tennyson  and  the  Brownings  ;  and  although  in  its 
own  time  serious  Victorian  prose,  of  which  perhaps  the  most 
eminent  makers  were  Ruskin  and  Carlyle,  has  seemed  of 
paramount  interest,  —  there  is  probability  that  posterity  may 
find  the  most  characteristic  feature  of  Victorian  literature  to 
have  been  that  school  of  fiction  which  brought  the  English 
novel  to  a  point  of  development  comparable  with  that  of  the 
Elizabethan  drama.  It  is  almost  literally  to  the  reign  of 
Queen  Victoria  that  we  owe  the  work  of  Dickens,  Thack 
eray,  George  Eliot,  and  the  numberless  lesser  novelists  and 
story-tellers  whose  work  has  been  the  chief  reading  of  the 
English-speaking  world,  down  to  the  days  of  Stevenson  and 
Rudyard  Kipling. 

The  first  and  the  most  widely  popular  of  Victorian  novel 
ists  was  Dickens,  whose  work  began  less  than  five  years 
after  Scott's  ended.  The  contrast  between  them  is  among 
the  most  instructive  in  literary  history.  Scott's  ideal  was  al 
ways  that  of  a  gentleman  ;  Dickens's,  with  equal  instinctive 
honesty  of  feeling,  was  that  of  the  small  trading  classes. 
Whatever  merits  Dickens  had,  and  these  were  great  and 
lasting,  he  fatally  lacked  one  grace  which  up  to  his  time  the 
literature  of  his  country  had  generally  preserved,  —  that  of 
distinction.  The  other  novelists  who  soon  arose  differed 
from  Dickens  in  many  ways,  often  possessing  a  sense  of  fact 
far  more  true  than  his,  and  sympathies  more  various.  At 
least  in  their  comparative  lack  of  distinction,  however,  they 
have  been  more  like  him  than  like  the  men  of  letters  of  any 
preceding  period.  They  have  generally  dealt,  too,  with  mat 
ters  of  nearly  contemporary  fact.  In  brief,  the  dominant  note 


148  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

of  Victorian  fiction,  which  is  probably  the  dominant  fact  of 
Victorian  literature,  is  a  note  of  triumphant  democracy. 

Broadly  speaking,  then,  we  may  say  that  up  to  the  time  of 
the  Reform  Bill  the  English  literature  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  expressed  itself  first  in  that  body  of  aspiring  poetry  which 
seems  the  most  memorable  English  utterance  since  Eliza 
bethan  times,  and  secondly  in  those  novels  of  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
which,  dealing  romantically  with  the  past,  indicate  the  accom 
plishment  of  a  world  revolution ;  and  that  since  the  Reform 
Bill  decidedly  the  most  popular  phase  of  English  literature  has 
been  prose  fiction  dealing  with  contemporary  life.  It  is  be 
yond  our  purpose  to  emphasise  the  growth  of  science  mean 
while,  a  growth  which  has  corresponded  with  such  material 
changes  as  are  typified  by  the  use  of  steam  and  electricity. 
But  many  now  think  that  in  time  to  come  the  most  lasting 
name  of  the  Victorian  epoch  will,  after  all,  be  that  of  Charles 
Darwin. 

Slight  as  this  sketch  of  English  literature  in  the  nineteenth 
century  has  been,  it  is  sufficient  for  our  purpose,  which  is 
only  to  remind  ourselves  of  what  occurred  in  England  during 
the  century  when  something  which  we  may  fairly  call  litera 
ture  developed  in  America. 


Ill 

AMERICAN    HISTORY    SINCE    l8oO 

MR.  HENRY  ADAMS  shows  how  amid  the  constant  growth  of 
democracy,  amid  practical  assertion  of  the  power  which  re 
sides  in  the  uneducated  classes,  and  which  our  Constitution 
made  conscious,  our  national  life  began  with  bewildering  con 
fusion.  To  the  better  classes,  embodied  in  the  old  Federalist 
party,  this  seemed  anarchical ;  the  election  of  Mr.  Jefferson 
they  honestly  believed  to  portend  the  final  overthrow  of  law 
and  order.  Instead  of  that,  one  can  see  now,  it  really  started 
our  permanent  progress.  Among  the  early  incidents  of  this 
progress  was  the  purchase  of  Louisiana,  which  finally  estab 
lished  the  fact  that  the  United  States  were  to  dominate  the 
North  American  continent.  So  complete,  indeed,  has  our 
occupation  of  this  continent  become  that  it  is  hard  to  remem 
ber  how  in  1800  the  United  States,  at  least  so  far  as  they 
were  settled,  were  almost  comprised  between  the  Alleghanies 
and  the  Atlantic.  In  less  than  one  hundred  years  we  have 
colonised,  and  to  a  considerable  degree  civilised,  the  vast 
territory  now  under  our  undisputed  control ;  and  the  fact  that 
the  regions  which  we  have  colonised  have  chanced  to  be  con 
tiguous  to  the  regions  which  were  first  under  our  sovereignty 
has  only  concealed  without  altering  the  truth  that  the  United 
States  have  proved  themselves  the  most  successful  colonising 
power  in  modern  history.1 

Our  colonial  growth,  or  expansion,  —  call  it  what  you  will, 
—  began  with  the  purchase  of  Louisiana.     Nine  years  later, 

1  See  an  article  by  Mr.  A.  Lawrence  Lowell  in  the  "  Atlantic  "  for  Feb 
ruary,  1899. 


150  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

under  President  Madison,  came  that  second  war  with  England 
which,  while  unimportant  in  English  history,  was  very  import 
ant  in  ours.  The  War  of  1812  asserted  our  independent 
nationality,  our  ability  to  maintain  ourselves  against  a  foreign 
enemy,  and,  above  all,  our  righting  power  on  the  sea,  of  which 
fresh  evidence  was  given  during  the  brief  but  crucial  war  with 
Spain  in  1898.  The  War  of  1812,  besides,  the  only  foreign 
war  in  our  history  except  this  recent  Spanish  one,  did  much 
to  revive  and  strengthen  the  Revolutionary  conviction  of  our 
essential  alienation  from  England.  Before  that  war  broke 
out  there  were  times  when  it  seemed  almost  as  likely  to  arise 
with  France.  It  was  an  incident,  we  can  now  see,  of  that 
death-grapple  wherein  England  was  maintaining  against  con 
tinental  Europe  incarnate  in  Napoleon  those  traditions  of  Com 
mon  Law  which  we  share  with  her.  America  had  felt  the 
arbitrary  insolence  of  Napoleon,  as  well  as  that  of  England  ; 
neutrality  proved  impossible.  We  chanced  to  take  the  French 
side.  Thereby,  whatever  we  gained,  —  and  surely  our  strength 
ened  national  integrity  is  no  small  blessing,  —  we  certainly 
emphasised  and  prolonged  that  misunderstanding  with  the 
mother  country  which  still  keeps  disunited  the  two  peoples 
who  preserve  the  Common  Law. 

The  next  critical  fact  in  our  history  was  the  assertion  in 
1823  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  In  brief,  this  declares  that 
the  American  continent  is  no  longer  a  region  where  foreign 
powers  may  freely  colonise  ;  that  from  the  Arctic  Ocean  to 
Cape  Horn  American  soil  is  as  fully  controlled  by  established 
governments  as  is  Europe  itself;  that  the  chief  political 
power  in  America  is  the  United  States ;  and  that  any  attempt 
on  the  part  of  a  foreign  power  to  establish  colonies  in  Amer 
ica,  or  to  interfere  with  the  governments  already  established 
there,  will  be  regarded  by  the  United  States  as  an  unfriendly 
act.  This  virtual  declaration  of  imperial  dominance  in  a 
whole  hemisphere  has  generally  been  respected.  Except  for 
the  transitory  empire  of  Maximilian  in  Mexico,  established 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  151 

during  the  most  troublous  period  of  our  Civil  War  by  that 
filibustering  French  emperor  who  deliberately  embodied  con 
tinental  as  distinguished  from  English  ideals,  the  integrity  of 
the  American  continent  has  remained  unthreatened  since 
President  Monroe's  famous  message. 

o 

During  the  next  thirty-five  years  developed  that  inevitable 
national  disunion  which  culminated  in  the  Civil  War  of  1861. 
The  economic  and  social  systems  of  North  and  of  South  were 
radically  different:  generation  by  generation  they  naturally 
bred  men  less  and  less  able  to  understand  each  other.  As  we 
shall  see  later,  the  Southern  temper  lagged  behind  the  Northern 
somewhat  as  for  two  centuries  the  native  temper  of  America 
lagged  behind  that  of  England.  The  Southerners  of  the  fifties 
were  far  more  like  their  revolutionary  ancestors  than  were  the 
Northerners.  General  Washington  and  General  Lee,  for  ex 
ample,  have  many  more  points  of  resemblance  than  have 
President  Washington  and  President  Lincoln  ;  and  Lee  was 
really  as  typically  Southern  in  his  time  as  Lincoln  in  those 
same  days  was  typically  Northern.  The  Civil  War  involved 
deep  moral  questions,  concerning  the  institution  of  slavery 
and  national  union ;  but  at  last  we  can  begin  to  see  that  it 
was  a  moral  struggle  on  both  sides.  So  the  generation  now 
in  its  prime,  to  whom  the  Civil  War  is  a  matter  not  of  expe 
rience  but  of  history,  is  coming  to  understand  that  what  ulti 
mately  makes  it  so  superbly  heroic  a  tradition  is  the  fact  that 
on  both  sides  men  ardently  gave  their  lives  for  what  they 
believed  to  be  the  truth.  The  conflict  was  truly  irrepressible ; 
social  and  economic  conditions  had  developed  the  different 
parts  of  our  country  in  ways  so  different  that  nothing  but 
force  could  prevent  disunion. 

Disunion  did  not  ensue.  Instead  of  it,  after  a  troubled 
interval,  has  come  a  union  constantly  stronger.  Our  history 
since  the  Civil  War  is  too  recent  for  confident  generalisation. 
Two  or  three  of  its  features,  however,  are  growing  salient. 
Long  before  the  Civil  War  certain  phases  of  material  pros- 


1 52  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

perity  had  begun  to  develop  in  this  country, —  the  great  cotton- 
growing  of  the  South,  for  one  thing,  and  for  another,  the 
manufactures  of  New  England.  Since  the  Civil  War  some 
similar  economic  facts  have  produced  marked  changes  in  our 
national  equilibrium.  One  has  been  the  opening  of  the  great 
lines  of  transcontinental  railway.  Along  with  these  has  de 
veloped  the  enormous  growth  of  bread-stuffs  throughout  the 
West,  together  with  incalculable  increase  of  our  mineral 
wealth.  These  causes  have  effected  the  complete  settlement 
of  our  national  territory.  At  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  a 
great  part  of  the  country  between  the  Mississippi  and  Cali 
fornia  remained  virtually  unappropriated.  At  present  almost 
every  available  acre  of  it  is  in  private  ownership.  The  Span 
ish  War  of  1898,  then,  indicates  something  more  than  the 
political  accidents  or  intrigues  which  superficially  seemed  to 
cause  it.  Just  as  truly  as  the  Revolution  or  the  Civil  War, 
the  Spanish  War  probably  marked  a  critical  fact  in  American 
history.  Our  continent  is  finally  settled.  Such  freedom  as 
our  more  adventurous  spirits  used  to  find  in  going  West  they 
must  now  find,  if  at  all,  in  emigrating,  like  our  English 
cousins,  to  regions  not  politically  under  our  control.  There 
they  must  face  a  serious  question.  Shall  they  submit  them 
selves,  in  the  regions  where  their  active  lives  must  pass,  to 
legal  and  political  systems  foreign  to  their  own  ;  or  shall  they 
assert  in  those  regions  the  legal  and  political  principles  which, 
for  all  the  superficial  materialism  of  their  lives,  the  fact  of 
their  ancestral  language  makes  them  believe  ideal  ?  There 
is  an  aspect,  which  future  years  may  prove  profoundly  true, 
wherein  what  we  call  imperialism  seems  a  blundering  awaken 
ing  to  the  consciousness  that  if  our  language  and  our  law 
are  to  survive,  they  must  survive  by  unwelcome  force  of 
conquest. 

So  for  the  first  time  since  the  settlement  of  Virginia  and 
New  England  we  come  to  a  point  where  the  history  of  Eng 
land  and  that  of  America  assume  similar  aspects.  For  nearly 


AMERICAN  HISTORY  153 

three  centuries  the  national  experience  of  England  and  the 
national  inexperience  of  America  have  tended  steadily  to 
diverge.  Our  inexperience  is  fast  fading.  At  the  close  of 
our  first  century  of  independent  existence  we  find  ourselves 
as  a  nation  unexpectedly  and  regretfully  face  to  face  with  the 
question  which  during  the  reign  of  her  present  Majesty  has 
been  the  most  important  before  the  mother  country.  The 
growth  of  population  during  the  nineteenth  century,  the  in 
credible  improvement  of  intercommunication  by  steam  and 
electricity,  and  the  immense  consequent  development  of  trade, 
are  placing  before  us  an  unavoidable  dilemma.  Shall  our 
language,  with  its  ideals  of  law  and  of  conduct,  dominate; 
or  shall  it  recede  and  yield  to  others  ?  This  same  question 
presses  on  England,  too.  In  this  final  historical  fact  of  com 
mon  experience  there  appears  some  chance  of  such  future 
union  of  our  ancestral  language  and  ideals  as  the  disuniting 
influence  of  three  hundred  years  long  placed  almost  beyond 
the  range  of  hope. 


IV 

LITERATURE    IN    AMERICA    SINCE     l80Q 

IT  is  only  during  this  nineteenth  century,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  literature  in  America  has  advanced  to  a  point  where  it 
deserves  detached  study.  By  chance  its  various  phases, 
though  not  exactly  like  those  of  contemporary  English  lit 
erature,  fall  into  chronologic  groups  very  like  those  which  we 
noted  in  the  literature  of  the  mother  country.  During  the  first 
thirty  years  of  this  century  the  chief  development  of  literature 
in  America  took  place  in  the  Middle  States,  centring  —  as  the 
life  of  the  Middle  States  tended  more  and  more  to  centre  — 
in  the  city  of  New  York.  The  literary  prominence  of  this 
region  roughly  corresponds  with  those  years  between  1798 
and  1832  which  produced  the  poets  of  the  Regency  and 
the  "  Waverley  Novels."  Meanwhile,  as  we  shall  see  later, 
New  England,  which  for  a  century  past  had  been  less  con 
spicuous  in  American  intellectual  life  than  at  the  beginning, 
was  gathering  the  strength  which  finally  expressed  itself  in 
the  most  important  literature  hitherto  produced  in  our  country. 
Broadly  speaking,  this  literature  was  contemporary  with  the 
Victorian.  In  1837,  when  her  Majesty  came  to  the  throne, 
it  was  hardly  in  existence;  before  1881,  when  George  Eliot, 
the  third  of  the  great  Victorian  novelists,  died,  it  was  virtually 
complete.  To-day  it  may  be  regarded  as  a  thing  of  the  past. 
What  has  succeeded  it  is  too  recent  for  historical  treatment ; 
at  this  we  shall  only  glance.  For  in  a  study  like  ours  to  dis 
cuss  living  men  seems  more  and  more  to  be  as  far  from  wis 
dom  as  to  sensitive  temper  it  must  seem  from  decency.  In 
the  chapters  to  come,  then,  we  shall  consider  these  three 
literary  epochs  in  turn  :  first,  the  prominence  of  the  Middle 
States ;  next,  the  Renaissance  of  New  England ;  and,  finally, 
what  has  followed. 


BOOK     IV 

LITERATURE    IN    THE    MIDDLE 
STATES    FROM  1798  to  1857 


BOOK    IV 

LITERATURE   IN   THE  MIDDLE   STATES 
FROM    1798   to  1857 


CHARLES    BROCKDEN    BROWN 

DURING  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Hart 
ford  Wits  were  far  from  alone  in  their  vigorously  patriotic 
effort  to  create  a  national  literature  for  America.  A  glance 
through  the  pages  of  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  "  Library  of 
American  Literature "  will  show  how  considerable  in  quan 
tity,  though  not  in  quality,  was  the  fruitless  literary  activity 
of  the  period.  Decidedly  before  1800  a  great  many  Ameri 
cans  were  trying  to  write,  and  were  founding  on  all  sides 
newspapers,  magazines,  reviews,  and  the  like,  usually  ephem 
eral.  The  numerous  printing-presses  which  thus  came 
into  existence  began  meantime  to  place  at  public  disposal, 
for  surprisingly  low  prices,  the  masterpieces  of  that  English 
literature  which  our  patriotic  men  of  letters  were  endeavour 
ing  to  emulate  or  to  surpass.  In  New  York,  a  little  later, 
appeared  an  admirably  printed  series  of  British  Classics  in 
something  like  a  hundred  volumes ;  and  a  characteristic  ex 
ample  of  what  occupied  the  leisure  of  country  printers,  whose 
chief  business  was  to  produce  weekly  newspapers,  may  be 
found  in  a  pretty  little  pocket  edition  of  Boswell's  "  Life  of 
Johnson,"  printed  in  1824  at  Bellows  Falls,  Vermont. 

Among  other  abortive  phases  of  literary  activity  during  the 
period  of  the  Hartford  Wits,  was  an  effort  to  create  a  native 
American  drama.  In  fact,  up  to  the  present  time,  the  Ameri- 


158  THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

can  theatre  has  produced  no  more  permanent  work  than  that 
of  John  Howard  Payne,  who  is  remembered  only  as  the 
author  of  "  Home,  Sweet  Home,"  a  song  from  an  otherwise 
forgotten  opera.  In  life,  however,  Payne  was  not  a  solitary 
figure ;  he  belonged  to  the  later  period  of  that  school  of 
American  theatrical  writing  whose  chief  founder  is  sometimes 
said  to  have  been  William  Dunlap.  Of  late  years  the  Dunlap 
Society  of  New  York  has  revived  his  name  and  has  tried  to 
revive  his  plays.  This  pious  act  has  succeeded  only  in  justi 
fying  the  oblivion  which  long  ago  overtook  writer  and  work 
alike.  Yet  in  the  course  of  Dunlap's  literary  career  he  pro 
duced  one  book  worth  our  attention.  The  man  himself,  son 
of  an  Irish  officer  who  had  settled  in  New  Jersey  after  the 
capture  of  Quebec,  was  a  person  whose  general  character 
may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that,  having  lost  the  sight  of 
his  right  eye,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  art  of  painting,  in 
which  he  so  far  succeeded  as  to  become  a  founder  of  the 
National  Academy  of  Design.  His  career  as  artist  and 
dramatist  was  at  its  height  in  New  York  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  The  work  which  makes  him  worth 
our  momentary  attention  came  a  little  later;  it  is  his  two- 
volume  book,  published  in  1815,  which  remains  the  principal 
authority  concerning  the  life  of  Charles  Brockden  Brown. 

Dunlap's  Life  of  Brown  is  unintentionally  comic.  It  runs 
through  its  two  long  volumes  with  never  a  chapter  from 
beginning  to  end ;  it  has  neither  table  of  contents  nor  index  ; 
and  the  diffuse  pomposity  of  its  style  may  be  inferred  from  the 
sentence  with  which,  after  above  two  pages  of  generalities,  he 
finally  attacks  his  subject  :  —  ; 

"  Brown  is  one  of  those  names  which  belongs  to  so  great  a  portion 
of  those  who  descend  from  English  parentage  that  it  ceases  to  identify 
an  individual.  Brockden  is  a  happy  addition  which  was  derived  from 
a  distant  relation." 

Incidentally  Dunlap  introduces  such  copious  extracts  from 
Brown's  writings,  and  in  so  confused  a  way,  that  except  as  a 


BROCKDEN  BROWN  159 

matter  of  style  you  would  often  be  at  a  loss  to  know  which  of 
the  two  you  were  reading.  His  temper,  too,  is  as  far  from 
critical  as  that  of  the  Mr.  Weems  who  gave  us  the  story  of 
Washington  and  the  cherry-tree.  For  all  its  faults,  however, 
Dunlap's  book  is  honestly  admiring,  affectionately  sympathetic, 
and  artless  enough  to  produce,  along  with  exasperating 
bewilderment,  a  growing  sense  of  the  artistic  and  literary  en 
vironment  from  which  our  first  professional  man  of  letters 
emerged. 

For  Brockden  Brown,  though  for  years  almost  forgotten, 
was  really  so  memorable  that  in  1834,  when  Jared  Sparks 
began  his  u  Library  of  American  Biography,"  a  Life  of  Brown 
by  Prescott,  the  future  historian,  deservedly  appeared  in  the 
first  volume.  Charles  Brockden  Brown /was  born  in  Phila 
delphia,  of  respectable  Quaker  parentage,  on  January  17, 
1771.  For  a  while  he  studied  law;  but,  finding  himself 
irresistibly  interested  in  literature,  he  turned  to  letters  as  a 
means  of  support  at  the  age  of  about  twenty-five.  Before 
1796  he  had  contributed  essays  to  the  "  Columbus  Magazine." 
In  1797  he  published  a  work  on  marriage  and  divorce  entitled 
"  The  Dialogue  of  Alcuin."  In  the  following  year,  —  the  year 
of  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads,"  —  he  produced  his  first  novel, 
"  Wieland,"  which  had  popular  success.  Within  three  years 
he  had  published  five  other  novels.  In  1799  he  became 
editor  of  the  "  Monthly  Magazine  and  American  Review," 
which  lasted  only  a  few  months.  For  five  years  after  1803 
he  edited  "  The  Literary  Magazine  and  American  Register." 
The  names  of  these  periodicals,  like  that  of  the  "  Columbus 
Magazine "  to  which  he  had  contributed  years  before,  are 
worth  mention  only  because  we  are  always  in  danger  of  forget 
ting  what  weedy  crops  of  such  nature  had  long  ago  sprung  up 
and  withered  in  our  country.  The  greater  part  of  Brown's 
literary  life  was  passed  in  New  York.  He  died  of  consump 
tion  on  the  22d  of  February,  1810. 

Brown's  mature  years  came  during  that  period,  between  the 


160          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

Revolution  and  the  War  of  1812,  when  the  nationally 
independent  feeling  of  America  was  most  acutely  conscious. 
For  the  first  time  Europeans  were  becoming  aware  that 
America  existed.  Native  Americans  were  consequently 
possessed  by  an  impulse,  not  yet  wholly  past,  to  declare  to 
all  mankind,  and  particularly  to  Europeans,  that  Americans  are 
a  race  of  remarkable  merit.  This  impulse  —  the  cc  American 
brag  "  so  frequently  remarked  by  foreigners  —  is  clearly  evident 
in  the  works  of  Brown ;  it  is  more  so  still  in  the  books  which 
Dunlap  and  Prescott  wrote  about  him.  These  biographers 
were  disposed  not  only  to  speak  of  him  in  such  superlative 
terms  as  occasionally  make  one  fear  lest  the  American  vocabu 
lary  may  lose  the  positive  degree  of  adjectives ;  but  also  to 
maintain  as  his  chief  claim  to  eminence  that  his  work,  being 
purely  American,  must  of  course  be  thoroughly  original. 

The  most  cursory  glance  at  Brown's  English  contempora 
ries  should  have  reminded  them  that  no  claim  could  be  much 
worse  founded.  During  the  last  ten  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  English  literature  was  not  particularly  rich.  Among 
its  most  conspicuous  phases  was  a  kind  of  darkly  romantic 
novel,  which  probably  reached  highest  development  in  the 
more  extravagant  work  of  Germany  when  Germans  were 
obese  and  romantic  and  sentimental.  Half  a  century  before, 
English  fiction  had  produced  masterpieces, —  "Clarissa  Har- 
lowe,"  for  example,  "  Tom  Jones,"  "  Tristram  Shandy,"  and 
"  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield."  Between  1 790  and  1 800  English 
fiction  was  in  that  apparently  decadent  and  really  abortive 
condition  manifested  by  such  books  as  Lewis's  "  Monk," 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's  "  Mysteries  of  Udolpho,"  and  Godwin's 
more  significant  "Caleb  Williams." 

Godwin  is  partly  remembered  because  of  his  great  influence 
on  Shelley,  which  resulted  in  the  poet's  application  to  the 
philosopher's  own  family  of  those  principles  concerning  love 
and  marriage  which  Godwin  so  coolly  set  forth.  Really, 
however,  the  man  had  power  enough  to  be  remembered  for 


BROCKDEN  BROWN  161 

himself;  deeply  influenced  by  the  rationalistic  philosophy  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  he  devoted  himself  both  in  such  direct 
writings  as  his  "  Political  Justice,"  and  in  such  medicated 
fiction  as"  Caleb  Williams,"  to  expounding  deeply  revolutionary 
ideas.  "  Caleb  Williams  "  is  a  story  written  to  demonstrate 
how  hopelessly  the  artificial  conditions  of  society  and  law  may 
distort  a  normally  worthy  character.  The  hero  has  com 
mitted  a  murder,  morally  justifiable,  but  legally  a  capital  crime. 
To  avert  the  legal  consequence  of  his  act,  he  is  driven  to  a 
course  of  deceit  and  falsehood  which  finally  changes  him  into 
an  utter  villain.  We  are  left  to  infer  that  when  law  and 
morals  happen  not  to  coincide,  law  is  a  monstrous  evil.  In 
cidentally  "  Caleb  Williams "  is  written  in  what  is  meant  to 
be  a  thrillingly  mysterious  sty]e.  The  crimes  and  the  distor 
tion  of  character  with  which  it  deals  are  dark  and  horrible. 
At  least  in  manner  and  temper,  then,  the  book  has  something 
in  common  with  such  sensational,  meaningless  novels  as  the 
"  Mysteries  of  Udolpho,"  which  were  then  at  the  height  of 
their  popularity. 

Though  this  kind  of  literature  has  happily  proved  abortive, 
it  deeply  affected  several  men  properly  eminent  in  English 
literature.  If  Shelley  had  written  only  such  trivial  fiction 
as  "  Zastrozzi,"  however,  and  De  Quincey  nothing  more 
significant  than  "Klosterheim,"  neither  name  would  now  be 
remembered.  The  masterpiece  of  this  school  is  probably 
Mrs.  Shelley's  deeply  imaginative  "  Frankenstein,"  published 
in  1817  ;  its  last  manifestations  in  England  may  perhaps  be 
found  among  the  earlier  and  more  ridiculous  works  of 
Bulwer  Lytton.  Nowadays  all  this  seems  so  lifelessly 
antiquated  that  one  is  prone  to  forget  how  slight  were  the 
indications  in  1798  that  the  main  current  of  English  let 
ters  was  so  soon  to  take  another  and  more  wholesome 
direction. 

Were  there  no  direct  evidence  that  Brockden  Brown  was 
consciously  influenced  by  Godwin,  the  fact  might  be  inferred 

ii 


1 62          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

from  the  discussion  of  marriage  in  the  "  Dialogue  of  Alcuin," 
from  which  Dunlap  gives  copious  extracts  :  — 

"  Marriage,"  writes  Brown,  who  is  believed  to  have  lived  a  blame 
less  private  life,  "  is  an  union  founded  on  free  and  mutual  consent. 
It  cannot  exist  without  friendship.  It  cannot  exist  without  personal 
fidelity.  As  soon  as  the  union  ceases  to  be  spontaneous,  it  ceases  to 
be  just.  This  is  the  sum.  If  I  were  to  talk  for  months  I  could  add 
nothing  to  the  completeness  of  the  definition." 

Brown's  admiration  of  Godwin  might  equally  be  inferred 
from  the  general  character  of  his  style ;  but  for  their  historical 
relation  we  have  better  authority  still.  While  Dunlap  insists 
so  strongly  on  Brown's  individuality,  he  actually  quotes  words 
of  Brown's  which  assert  that  he  deliberately  made  Godwin  his 
model :  — 

"  What  is  the  nature  or  merit  of  my  performance  ?  —  When  a  mental 
comparison  is  made  between  this  and  the  mass  of  novels,  I  am  in 
clined  to  be  pleased  with  my  own  production.  But  when  the  objects 
of  comparison  are  changed,  and  I  revolve  the  transcendent  merits  of 
*  Caleb  Williams,'  my  pleasure  is  diminished,  and  is  preserved  from  a 
total  extinction  only  by  the  reflection  that  this  performance  is  the 
first." 

The  truth  is  that,  at  least  in  his  philosophical  speculations 
and  his  novels,  Brockden  Brown,  honestly  aspiring  to  prove 
America  highly  civilised,  was  instinctively  true  to  the  Ameri 
can  temper  of  his  time  in  attempting  to  prove  this  by  con 
scientious  imitation.  What  he  happened  to  imitate  was  a 
temporarily  fashionable  phase  of  stagnant  English  fiction. 
Nothing  better  marks  the  difference  between  English  literature 
and  American  in  1798  than  that  this  year  produced  both  the 
"Lyrical  Ballads"  and  "Wieland."  The  former  first  ex 
pressed  a  new  literary  spirit  in  England;  the  latter,  the  first 
serious  work  of  American  letters,  was  as  far  from  new  as 
Wordsworth's  verses  and  the  "Ancient  Mariner"  were  from 
conventional.  Beyond  doubt  one's  first  impression  is  that  the 
novels  of  Brown  are  merely  imitative. 


BROCKDEN  BROWN  163 

After  a  while,  however,  one  begins  to  feel,  beneath  his  con 
scientious  imitative  effort,  a  touch  of  something  individual.  \ 
In  that  epoch-making  "  Wieland,"  the  hero  is  a  gentleman  \ 
of  Philadelphia,  who  in  the  midst  of  almost  ideal  happiness  is 
suddenly  accosted  by  a  mysterious  voice  which  orders  him  to 
put  to  death  his  superhumanly  perfect  wife  and  children. 
The  mysterious  voice,  which  pursues  him  through  increasing 
moods  of  horror,  declares  itself  to  be  that  of  God.  At  last, 
driven  to  madness  by  this  appalling  command,  Wieland  obeys  it 
and  murders  his  family.  To  this  point,  in  spite  of  confusion 
and  turgidity,  the  story  has  power.  The  end  is  ludicrously 
weak;  the  voice  of  God  turns  out  to  have  been  merely  the 
trick  of  a  malignant  ventriloquist.  The  triviality  of  this 
catastrophe  tends  to  make  you  feel  as  if  all  the  preceding 
horrors  had  been  equally  trivial.  Really  this  is  not  the  case. 
The  chapters  in  which  the  mind  of  Wieland  is  gradually  pos 
sessed  by  delusion  could  have  been  written  only  by  one  who 
had  genuinely  felt  a  sense  of  what  hideously  mysterious  things 
may  lie  beyond  human  ken.  Some  such  sense  as  this,  in  ter 
ribly  serious  form,  haunted  the  imagination  of  Puritans.  In  a 
meretricious  form  it  appears  in  the  work  of  Poe.  In  a  form 
alive  with  beauty  it  reveals  itself  throughout  the  melancholy 
romances  of  Hawthorne.  In  Poe's  work  and  in  Hawthorne's, 
it  is  handled  with  something  like  mastery,  and  few  men 
of  letters  have  been  much  further  from  mastery  of  their  art 
than  Charles  Brockden  Brown  ;  but  the  sense  of  horror  which 
Brown  expressed  in  u  Wieland "  is  genuine.  To  feel  its 
power  you  need  only  compare  it  with  the  similar  feeling  ex 
pressed  in  Lewis's  "  Monk,"  in  the  u  Mysteries  of  Udolpho," 
or  even  in  "  Caleb  Williams "  itself. 

In  two  of  Brown's  later  novels,  u  Ormond  "  and  u  Arthur 
Mervyn,"  there  are  touches  more  directly  from  life  which  show 
another  kind  of  power.  Among  his  most  poignant  personal 
experiences  was  the  terrible  fact  of  epidemic  yellow  fever. 
During  a  visitation  of  this  scourge  Brown  was  in  New  York, 


164          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

where  he  was  on  intimate  terms  with  one  Dr.  Smith,  a  young 
physician  of  about  his  own  age.  An  Italian  gentleman,  arriv 
ing  in  town  with  an  introduction  to  Dr.  Smith,  was  taken 
with  the  plague  and  refused  lodging  in  any  respectable  hotel. 
Smith  found  him,  terribly  ill,  in  a  cheap  lodging-house, 
whence  he  took  him  home.  There  the  Italian  died ;  and 
Smith,  who  contracted  the  disease,  died  too.  Brockden 
Brown  was  with  them  all  the  while ;  he  came  to  know  the 
pestilence  appallingly  well.  In  both  "  Ormond  "  and  "  Arthur 
iMervyn"  there  are  descriptions  of  epidemic  yellow  fever 
almost  as  powerful  as  Defoe's  descriptions  of  the  London 
plague.  The  passage  in  "  Arthur  Mervyn,"  for  example, 
which  describes  a  yellow  fever  hospital  is  hideously  vivid :  — 

"After  a  time  I  opened  my  eyes,  and  slowly  gained  some  knowl 
edge  of  my  situation.  I  lay  upon  a  mattress,  whose  condition  proved 
that  an  half  decayed  corpse  had  recently  been  dragged  from  it.  The 
room  was  large,  but  it  was  covered  with  beds  like  my  own.  Between 
each,  there  was  scarcely  the  interval  of  three  feet.  Each  sustained  a 
wretch,  whose  groans  and  distortions  bespoke  the  desperateness  of 
his  condition.  .  .  . 

"  You  will  scarcely  believe  that,  in  this  scene  of  horrors,  the  sound 
of  laughter  should  be  overheard.  While  the  upper  rooms  of  this 
building  are  filled  with  the  sick  and  the  dying,  the  lower  apartments 
are  the  scenes  of  carousals  and  mirth.  The  wretches  who  are  hired, 
at  enormous  wages,  to  tend  the  sick  and  convey  away  the  dead, 
neglect  their  duty  and  consume  the  cordials,  which  are  provided  for 
the  patients,  in  debauchery  and  riot.  A  female  visage,  bloated  with 
malignity  and  drunkenness,  occasionally  looked  in.  Dying  eyes  were 
cast  upon  her,  invoking  the  boon,  perhaps,  of  a  drop  of  cold  water,  or 
her  assistance  to  change  a  posture  which  compelled  him  to  behold 
the  ghastly  writhings  or  dreadful  smile  of  his  neighbour. 

"  The  visitant  had  left  the  banquet  for  a  moment,  only  to  see  who 
was  dead.  If  she  entered  the  room,  blinking  eyes  and  reeling  steps 
showed  her  to  be  totally  unqualified  for  ministering  the  aid  that  was 
needed.  Presently  she  disappeared  and  others  ascended  the  stair 
case,  a  coffin  was  deposited  at  the  door,  the  wretch,  whose  heart  still 
quivered,  was  seized  by  rude  hands,  and  dragged  along  the  floor  into 
the  passage." 

The  power,  indicated  in  descriptions  like  that,  of  setting  his 
scenes  in  a  vividly  real  background  again  distinguishes  Brown 


BROCKDEN  BROWN  165 

from  his  English  contemporaries.  His  characters,  mean 
while,  are  lifelessly  conventional.  In  u  Ormond,"  for  example, 
the  villanous  seducer  who  out-Lovelaces  Lovelace  in  a  literal 
Philadelphia  is  irretrievably  u  make  believe ;  "  and  so  is  the  in 
credibly  spotless  Constantia  Dudley,  who,  oddly  enough,  is 
said  to  have  impressed  Shelley  as  the  most  perfect  creature  of 
human  imagination.  There  is  a  funny  touch  in  "  Ormond," 
which  brings  out  as  clearly  as  anything  the  contrast  between 
Brown's  true  backgrounds  and  his  tritely  fictitious  characters. 
Constantia  Dudley,  with  a  blind  father  on  her  hands,  in  the 
midst  of  epidemic  yellow  fever,  is  persecuted  by  her  seducer 
at  a  moment  when  the  total  resources  of  the  family  amount 
to  about  five  dollars.  Old  Mr.  Dudley  —  who  incidentally 
and  for  no  reason  has  once  been  a  drunkard,  but  has  now 
recovered  every  paternal  excellence  —  has  travelled  all  over 
the  world.  In  the  course  of  his  journeys  in  Italy  he  has  re 
marked  that  the  people  of  that  country  live  very  well  on 
polenta,  which  is  nothing  but  a  mixture  of  Indian  meal  and 
water,  resembling  the  Hasty  Pudding  so  dear  to  the  heart  of 
Joel  Barlow.  In  Philadelphia  at  that  time  Indian  meal  could 
be  purchased  very  cheaply.  With  about  two  dollars  and 
three  quarters,  then,  Constantia  procures  meal  enough  to 
preserve  the  lives  of  her  father,  herself,  and  their  devoted  ser 
vant  for  something  like  three  months,  thereby  triumphantly 
protecting  her  virtue  from  the  assaults  of  wealthy  persecution. 
Now,  it  is  said  that  these  facts  concerning  the  price  and  the 
nutritive  qualities  of  Indian  meal  are  as  true  as  were  the 
horrors  of  yellow  fever.  Constantia  and  her  father,  mean 
while,  and  the  wicked  seducer,  whose  careers  were  so  affected 
by  these  statistics,  are  rather  less  like  anything  human  than 
are  such  marionettes  as  doubtless  delighted  the  Italian  travels 
of  Mr.  Dudley. 

The  veracity  of  Brown's  backgrounds  appears  again  in 
"  Edgar  Huntley."  The  incidents  of  this  story  are  unim 
portant,  except  as  they  carry  a  somnambulist  into  the  woods 


1 66          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

and  caves  of  the  Pennsylvanian  country.  These,  despite 
some  theatrically  conventional  touches,  are  almost  as  real  as 
the  somnambulist  is  not.  Such  incongruities  cannot  blend 
harmoniously ;  Brown's  incessant  combination  of  reality  in 
nature  with  unreality  in  character  produces  an  effect  of 
bewildering  confusion. 

Nor  is  this  confusion  in  Brown's  novels  wholly  a  matter 
of  conception.  Few  writers  anywhere  seem  at  first  more 
hopelessly  to  lack  constructive  power.  Take  "  Arthur 
Mervyn,"  for  example :  the  story  begins  in  the  first  person ; 
the  narrator  meets  somebody  in  whose  past  history  he  is  in 
terested  ;  thereupon  the  second  personage  begins  to  narrate 
his  own  past,  also  in  the  first  person  ;  in  the  course  of  this 
narrative  a  third  character  appears,  who  soon  proceeds  to  be 
gin  a  third  autobiography ;  and  so  on.  As  one  who  is  be 
wildered  by  this  confusion,  however,  pauses  to  unravel  it  or  to 
wonder  what  it  means,  a  significant  fact  presents  itself.  Who 
ever  tries  to  write  fiction  must  soon  discover  one  of  his  most 
difficult  problems  to  be  the  choice  and  maintenance  of  a  defi 
nite  point  of  view.  To  secure  one,  this  device  of  assuming 
the  first  person  is  as  old  as  the  "  Odyssey,"  where  Odysseus 
narrates  so  many  memorable  experiences  to  the  king  of  the 
Phaeacians.  In  brief,  a  resort  to  this  world-old  device  gener 
ally  indicates  a  conscious  effort  to  get  material  into  manage 
able  form.  Paradoxical  as  it  seems,  then,  these  inextricable 
tangles  of  autobiography,  which  make  Brockden  Brown's  con 
struction  appear  so  formless,  probably  arose  from  an  impo 
tent  sense  that  form  ought  to  be  striven  for ;  and,  indeed, 
when  any  one  of  his  autobiographic  episodes  is  taken  by  itself, 
it  will  generally  be  found  pretty  satisfactory. 

When  we  come  to  the  technical  question  of  style,  too, 
the  simple  test  of  reading  aloud  will  show  that  Brockden 
Brown's  sense  of  form  was  unusual.  Of  course  his  work 
shows  many  of  the  careless  faults  inevitable  when  men  write 
with  undue  haste;  and  his  vocabulary  is  certainly  turgid; 


BROCKDEN  BROWN  167 

and  consciously  trying  to  write  effectively,  he  often  wrote 
absurdly  ;  but  the  man's  ear  was  true.  In  reading  any  page 
of  his  aloud,  you  will  find  your  voice  dwelling  where  the 
sense  requires  it  to  dwell.  Critics  have  remarked  that  if 
you  wish  to  distinguish  between  the  style  of  Addison  and 
that  of  Steele,  all  you  need  do  is  to  apply  a  vocal  test.  Addi- 
son's  ear  was  so  delicate  that  you  require  little  art  to  bring  out 
the  emphasis  of  his  periods ;  Steele  wrote  more  for  the  eye. 
In  other  words,  Steele  comparatively  lacked  a  trait  which 
Addison  and  Brockden  Brown  possessed  —  an  instinctive  sense 
of  formal  phrasing. 

If  we  regard  Brockden  Brown  only  as  an  imitator,  —  and 
as  such  he  is  perhaps  most  significant,  —  we  may  instructively 
remark  that  the  literature  of  America  begins  exactly  where 
the  pure  literature  of  a  normally  developed  language  is  apt  to 
leave  off.  A  great  literature,  originating  from  the  heart  of 
the  people,  declares  itself  first  in  spontaneous  songs  and  bal 
lads  and  legends;  it  is  apt  to  end  in  prose  fiction.  With 
laboured  prose  fiction  our  American  literature  begins.  The 
laboured  prose  fiction  of  Brown  has  traits,  however,  which  dis 
tinguish  it  from  similar  work  in  England.  To  begin  with, 
the  sense  of  horror  which  permeates  it  is  not  conventional 
but  genuine.  Brockden  Brown  could  instinctively  feel,  more 
deeply  than  almost  any  native  Englishman  since  the  days  of 
Elizabeth,  what  mystery  may  lurk  just  beyond  human  ken. 
In  the  second  place,  Brown's  work,  for  all  its  apparent  con 
fusion,  proves  confused  chiefly  by  impotent,  futile  attempt  to 
assure  his  point  of  view  by  autobiographic  device.  In  the 
third  place  he  reveals  on  almost  every  page  an  instinctive 
sense  of  rhythmical  form. 

Brown's  six  novels  are  rather  long,  and  all  hastily  written ; 
and  in  his  short,  invalid  life  he  never  attempted  any  other  form 
of  fiction.  As  one  considers  his  work,  however,  one  may  well 
incline  to  guess  that  if  he  had  confined  his  attempts  to  single 
episodes,  —  if  he  had  had  the  originality,  in  short,  to  invent 


i68          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

the  short  story,  —  he  might  have  done  work  favourably  com 
parable  with  that  of  Irving  or  Poe  or  even  Hawthorne. 
Brockden  Brown,  in  brief,  never  stumbled  on  the  one  literary 
form  which  he  might  have  mastered ;  pretty  clearly  that 
literary  form  was  the  sort  of  romantic  short  story  whose 
motive  is  mysterious;  and  since  his  time  that  kind  of  short 
story  has  proved  itself  the  most  characteristic  phase  of  native 
American  fiction. 


II 


WASHINGTON    IRVING 


THE  name  of  Washington  Irving  reminds  us  rather  startlingly 
how  short  is  the  real  history  of  American  letters.  Although 
he  has  been  dead  for  a  little  more  than  forty  years,  many 
people  still  remember  him  personally;  and  when  in  1842  he 
went  as  President  Tyler's  minister  to  Spain,  he  passed  through 
an  England  where  Queen  Victoria  had  already  been  five  years 
on  the  throne,  and  he  presented  his  credentials  to  Queen 
Isabella  II.,  who,  although  long  exiled  from  her  country,  is 
still  a  not  very  old  lady  in  Paris.  Yet  in  one  sense  this 
Irving,  who  has  not  yet  faded  from  living  memory,  may  be 
called,  more  certainly  than  Brockden  Brown,  the  first  American 
man  of  letters.  At  least,  he  was  the  first  whose  work  has  re 
mained  popular ;  and  the  first,  too,  who  was  born  after  the 
Revolution  had  made  native  Americans  no  longer  British  sub 
jects  but  citizens  of  the  United  States.  His  parents,  to  be 
sure,  were  foreign,  his  father  Scotch,  his  mother  English  ;  but 
he  himself  was  born  in  New  York  in  1783.  He  was  not 
very  strong;  his  early  habits  were  rather  desultory  and  his 
education  irregular  ;  he  studied  law  and  was  admitted  to  the 
bar,  but  never  practised  much ;  and  at  the  age  of  twenty-one 
he  was  sent  abroad  for  his  health.  There  he  remained  two 
years. 

His  distinctly  American  character  first  becomes  salient  dur 
ing  this  trip  abroad,  at  that  time  an  unusual  experience. 
He  was  of  simple  origin ;  his  family  were  in  respectable 
trade.  Born  in  England,  he  might  have  been  as  accomplished 
and  agreeable  as  he  ever  became,  but  he  could  hardly  have 


1 70          THE  MIDDLE  STATES, 

been  received  on  equal  terms  by  the  polite  society  of  Europe. 
Going  abroad,  as  an  American  citizen,  however,  he  took 
from  the  beginning  a  social  position  there  which  he  main 
tained  to  the  end.  He  was  cordially  received  by  people  of 
rank,  and  incidentally  had  little  to  do  with  those  of  the  station 
which  would  have  been  his  had  his  family  never  emigrated  to 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  He  was  among  the  first,  in  short, 
of  that  distinguished  body  of  Americans,  of  whom  later  ex 
amples  are  such  men  as  Ticknor,  Everett,  Sumner,  Motley, 
and  Lowell,  who  have  proved  during  the  nineteenth  century 
the  social  dignity  of  American  letters. 

In  1806,  Irving  returned  home;  the  next  year,  in  company 
with  one  or  two  kinsmen,  he  began  writing  a  series  of  essays 
called  the  "  Salmagundi  Papers."  Only  his  subsequent  emi 
nence  has  preserved  from  blameless  oblivion  these  conven 
tional  survivals  of  the  eighteenth  century.  About  this  time 
occurred  an  episode  which  deeply  influenced  his  whole  life : 
he  fell  in  love  with  a  young  girl  whose  death  at  seventeen 
almost  broke  his  heart.  When  she  died  he  was  at  her  bed 
side  ;  and  throughout  his  later  life  he  could  not  bear  to  hear 
her  name  mentioned.  The  tender  melancholy  which  one 
recognises  all  through  his  writings  was  probably  due  to  this 
bereavement ;  and  the  intense  simplicity  and  faithfulness  of 
his  pure  and  ideal  love  is  characteristic  not  only  of  the  man 
but  of  his  country. 

In  1809  he  published  his  first  considerable  book,  —  the 
"  Knickerbocker  History  of  New  York."  Shortly  thereafter 
he  devoted  himself  to  business  ;  and  in  1815  he  went  abroad 
in  connection  with  his  affairs.  There,  after  a  few  years,  com 
mercial  misfortune  overtook  him.  In  1819  he  brought  out 
his  "  Sketch  Book ;  "  from  that  time  forth  he  was  a  pro 
fessional  man  of  letters.  He  remained  abroad  until  1832, 
spending  the  years  between  1826  and  1829  in  Spain,  and 
those  between  1829  and  1832  as  Secretary  to  the  American 
Legation  in  London.  Coming  home,  he  resided  for  ten  years 


IRVING  171 

at  Tarrytown  on  the  Hudson,  in  that  house  "  Sunnyside " 
which  has  become  associated  with  his  name.  From  1842  to 
1846  he  was  Minister  to  Spain.  He  then  finally  returned 
home,  crowning  his  literary  work  with  his  "  Life  of  Wash 
ington,"  of  which  the  last  volume  appeared  in  the  year  of  his 
death,  1859. 

Irving  was  the  first  American  man  of  letters  to  attract 
wide  attention  abroad.  The  "  Knickerbocker  History  "  was 
favourably  received  by  contemporary  England ;  and  the  "  Sketch 
Book "  and  "  Bracebridge  Hall,"  which  followed  it,  were 
from  the  beginning  what  they  have  remained, —  as  popular 
in  England  as  they  have  been  in  his  native  country.  The 
same,  on  the  whole,  is  true  of  his  writings  about  Spain  j  and, 
to  somewhat  slighter  degree,  of  his  "  Life  of  Goldsmith  "  and 
his  "  Life  of  Washington."  The  four  general  classes  of 
work  here  mentioned  followed  one  another  in  fairly  distinct 
succession  through  his  half-century  of  literary  life.  We  may 
perhaps  get  our  clearest  notion  of  him  by  considering  them 
in  turn. 

The  "  Knickerbocker  History  of  New  York  "  has  properly 
lasted.  The  origin  of  this  book  resembles  that  of  Fielding's 
u  Joseph  Andrews  "  some  seventy  years  before,  and  of  Dick- 
ens's  "  Pickwick  Papers  "  some  twenty-five  years  later.  All 
three  began  as  burlesques  and  ended  as  independent  works  of 
fiction,  retaining  of  their  origin  little  more  trace  than  occa 
sional  extravagance.  In  1807  one  Dr.  Samuel  Latham 
Mitchill  had  published  "  A  Picture  of  New  York,"  said  to  be 
ridiculous,  even  among  works  of  its  time,  for  ponderous  pre 
tentiousness.  The  book  had  such  success,  however,  that  Irv 
ing  and  his  brother  were  moved  to  write  a  parody  of  it. 
Before  long  Irving's  brother  tired  of  the  work,  which  was  left 
to  Irving  himself.  As  he  wrote  on,  his  style  and  purpose 
underwent  a  change.  Instead  of  burlesquing  Mitchill,  he 
found  himself  composing  a  comic  history  of  old  New  York, 
and  incidentally  introducing  a  good  deal  of  personal  and  polit- 


i;2          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

ical  satire,  now  as  forgotten  as  that  which  lies  neglected  in 
"  Gulliver's  Travels."  His  style,  which  began  in  deliberately 
ponderous  imitation  of  Dr.  Mitchill's,  passed  almost  insensibly 
into  one  of  considerable  freedom,  evidently  modelled  on  that 
of  eighteenth-century  England.  Most  of  the  book,  then, 
reads  like  some  skilful  bit  of  English  writing  during  the  gen 
eration  which  preceded  the  American  Revolution.  The 
substance  of  the  book,  however,  is  distinctly  different  from 
what  was  then  usual  in  England. 

Assuming  throughout  the  character  of  Diedrich  Knicker 
bocker,  an  eccentric  old  bachelor  who  typifies  the  decaying 
Dutch  families  of  New  York,  Irving  mingles  with  many  actual 
facts  of  colonial  history  all  manner  of  unbridled  extravagance. 
The  governors  and  certain  other  of  his  personages  are  histori 
cal  ;  the  wars  with  New  Englanders  are  historical  wars ;  and 
historical,  too,  is  the  profound  distaste  for  Yankee  character 
which  Washington  Irving  needed  no  assumed  personality  to 
feel.  But  throughout  the  book  there  mingles  with  these  his 
torical  facts  the  wildest  sort  of  sportive  nonsense.  Wouter 
Van  Twiller,  to  take  a  casual  example,  was  an  authentic  Dutch 
governor  of  New  Amsterdam ;  and  here  is  the  way  in  which 
Irving  writes  about  him :  — 

"  In  his  council  he  presided  with  great  state  and  solemnity.  He 
sat  in  a  huge  chair  of  solid  oak,  hewn  in  the  celebrated  forest  of  the 
Hague,  fabricated  by  an  experienced  timmerman  of  Amsterdam,  and 
curiously  carved  about  the  arms  and  feet,  into  exact  imitations  of 
gigantic  eagle's  claws.  -Instead  of  a  sceptre  he  swayed  a  long  Turk 
ish  pipe,  wrought  with  jasmin  and  amber,  which  had  been  presented 
to  a  stadtholder  of  Holland,  at  the  conclusion  of  a  treaty  with  one  of 
the  petty  Barbary  powers.  In  this  stately  chair  would  he  sit,  and 
this  magnificent  pipe  would  he  smoke,  shaking  his  right  knee  with 
constant  motion,  and  fixing  his  eye  for  hours  together  upon  a  little 
print  of  Amsterdam,  which  hung  in  a  black  frame  against  the  op 
posite  wall  of  the  council  chamber.  Nay,  it  has  even  been  said  that 
when  any  deliberation  of  extraordinary  length  and  intricacy  was  on  the 
carpet,  the  renowned  Wouter  would  shut  his  eyes  for  full  two  hours 
at  a  time,  that  he  might  not  be  disturbed  by  external  objects  —  and  at 
such  times  the  internal  commotion  of  his  mind  was  evinced  by  certain 


IRVING  173 

regular  guttural  sounds,  which  his  admirers  declared  were  merely  the 
noise  of  conflict,  made  by  his  contending  doubts  and  opinions." 

More  than  possibly  the  chair  here  mentioned  was  some  real 
chair  which  Irving  had  seen  and  in  which  an  old  Dutch  gov 
ernor  might  have  sat.  Conceivably  the  Turkish  pipe  may 
have  been  at  least  legendarily  true.  The  rest  of  the  passage 
is  utter  extravagance ;  yet  you  will  be  at  a  little  pains  to  say 
just  where  fact  passes  nonsense. 

Though  this  kind  of  humour  is  not  unprecedented,  one 
thing  about  it  is  worth  attention.  When  we  were  consider 
ing  the  work  of  Franklin,  we  found  in  his  letter  to  a  London 
newspaper  concerning  the  state  of  the  American  colonies  a 
grave  mixture  of  fact  and  nonsense,  remarkably  like  the 
American  humour  of  our  later  days.  In  Irving's  "  Knick 
erbocker  History "  one  finds  something  very  similar.  The 
fun  of  the  thing  lies  in  frequent  and  often  imperceptible 
lapses  from  sense  to  nonsense  and  back  again.  Something 
of  the  same  kind,  expressed  in  a  far  less  gracious  manner  than 
Irving's,  underlies  Mark  Twain's  comic  work  and  that  of  our 
latest  journalistic  humourist,  Mr.  Dooley.  This  deliberate  con 
fusion  of  sense  and  nonsense,  in  short,  proves  generally  charac 
teristic  of  American  humour  ;  and  although  the  formal  amenity 
of  Irving's  style  often  makes  him  seem  rather  an  imitator  of 
the  eighteenth-century  English  writers  than  a  native  Ameri 
can,  one  can  feel  that  if  the  "  Knickerbocker  History  "  and 
Franklin's  letter  could  be  reduced  to  algebraic  formulas,  these 
formulae  would  pretty  nearly  coincide  both  with  one  another 
and  with  that  of  the  "  Innocents  Abroad."  The  temper  of 
the  "  Knickerbocker  History,"  may,  accordingly,  be  regarded 
as  freshly  American.  The  style,  meanwhile,  is  rather  like 
that  of  Goldsmith.  When  the  "  Knickerbocker  History " 
was  published,  Goldsmith  had  been  dead  for  thirty-five  years. 
In  Irving,  then,  we  find  a  man  who  used  the  traditional  style 
of  eighteenth-century  England  for  a  purpose  foreign  at  once 
to  the  century  and  the  country  of  its  origin. 


1/4          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

It  was  ten  years  before  Irving  again  appeared  as  a  seri 
ous  man  of  letters.  Then  came  the  "  Sketch  Book,"  which 
contains  his  best-known  stories,  — "  Rip  Van  Winkle"  and 
"The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow."  The  book  is  a  col 
lection  of  essays  and  short  stories,  written  in  a  style  more 
like  Goldsmith's  than  ever.  The  year  in  which  it  appeared 
was  that  which  gave  to  England  the  first  two  cantos  of  "  Don 
Juan,"  Hazlitt's  "  Lectures  on  the  Comic  Writers,"  Leigh 
Hunt's  "  Indicator,"  Scott's  "  Bride  of  Lammermoor  "  and 
"  Legend  of  Montrose,"  Shelley's  "  Cenci,"  and  Words 
worth's  "  Peter  Bell."  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  in 
formal  style  the  "  Sketch  Book "  is  more  conscientious  than 
any  of  these.  Its  prose,  in  fact,  has  hardly  been  surpassed,  if 
indeed  it  has  been  equalled,  in  nineteenth-century  England. 
This  prose,  however,  is  of  that  balanced,  cool,  rhythmical 
sort  which  in  England  flourished  most  during  the  mid  years 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  , 

In  the  "Sketch  Book,"  too,  there  are  many  papers  and 
passages  which  might  have  come  straight  from  some  of  the 
later  eighteenth-century  essayists.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  many  passages,  such  as  "  Rip  Van  Winkle,"  which  could 
hardly  have  appeared  in  Goldsmith's  England.  Though  Gold 
smith's  England,  of  course,  was  becoming  sentimental,  it  never 
got  to  that  delight  in  a  romantic  past  which  characterised  the 
period  of  which  the  dominant  writer  was  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
By  1819,  however,  Scott  had  attained  his  highest  development. 
In  his  work  there  was  far  more  passion  and  meaning  than  in 
the  romantic  stories  of  Irving ;  in  technical  form,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  comparatively  careless,  nor  on  the  whole  is  it 
more  genuinely  permeated  with  the  romantic  sentiment  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  story  of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  for  ex 
ample,  is  a  legend  which  exists  in  various  European  forms. 
Whether  Irving  adopted  it  from  such  old  German  tales  as 
that  of  the  sleeping  Barbarossa,  or  from  some  Spanish  story 
such  as  he  later  told  when  he  described  the  sleep  of  enchanted 


IRVING  175 

Moors,  or  whether  in  his  time  the  legend  itself  had  migrated 
to  the  Hudson  Valley,  makes  no  difference.  He  assumed  that 
it  belonged  in  the  Catskills.  He  placed  it,  as  a  little  earlier 
Brockden  Brown  placed  his  less  significant  romances,  in  a 
real  background;  and  he  infused  into  it  the  romantic  spirit 
which  was  already  characteristic  of  European  letters,  and  soon 
to  be  almost  more  so  of  American.  He  enliv^pl  the  tale, 
meanwhile,  with  a  subdued  form  of  such  humour  as  runs  riot 
in  the  "  Knickerbocker  History;"  and  all  this  modern  senti 
ment,  he  phrased  as  he  had  phrased  his  first  book,  in  terms 
modelled  on  the  traditional  style  of  a  generation  or 
fore.  The  peculiar  trait  of  tly  "  Sketch  Book,"  in 
its  combination  of  fresh  romantic  feeling  with  traditional 
Augustan  style. 

The  passages  of  the  "  Sketch  Book  "  which  deal  with  Eng 
land  reveal  so  sympathetic  a  sense  of  old  English  tradition 
that  some  of  them,  like  those  concerning  Stratford  and  West 
minster  Abbey,  have  become  almost  classical ;  just  as  Irving's 
later  work,  "  Bracebridge  Hall,"  is  now  generally  admitted 
to  typify  a  pleasant  phase  of  country  life  in  England  almost  as 
well  as  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  typified  another,  a  century 
earlier.  There  are  papers  in  the  "  Sketch  Book,"  however, 
which  from  our  point  of  view  are  more  significant.  Take 
those,  for  example,  on  "  John  Bull "  and  on  "  English  Writ 
ers  concerning  America."  Like  the  writing  of  Hopkinson  at 
the  time  of  the  American  Revolution,  these  reveal  a  distinct 
sense  on  the  part  of  an  able  and  cultivated  American  that  the 
contemporary  English  differ  from  our  countrymen.  The  ey 
which  observed  John  Bull  in  the  aspect  which  follows, 
foreign  to  England  :  — 

"  Though  really  a  good-hearted,  good-tempered  old  fellow  at  bot 
tom,  yet  he  is  singularly  fond  of  being  in  the  midst  of  contention.  It 
is  one  of  his  peculiarities,  however,  that  he  only  relishes  the  begin 
ning  of  an  affray ;  he  always  goes  into  a  fight  with  alacrity,  but  comes 
out  of  it  grumbling  even  when  victorious ;  and  though  no  one  fights 
with  more  obstinacy  to  carry  a  contested  point,  yet,  when  the  battle 


1 76          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

is  over,  and  he  comes  to  the  reconciliation,  he  is  so  much  taken  up 
with  the  mere  shaking  of  hands,  that  he  is  apt  to  let  his  antagonist 
pocket  all  that  they  have  been  quarrelling  about.  It  is  not,  therefore, 
fighting  that  he  ought  so  much  to  be  on  his  guard  against,  as  making 
friends.  It  is  difficult  to  cudgel  him  out  of  a  farthing  ;  but  put  him  in 
a  good  humour,  and  you  may  bargain  him  out  of  all  the  money  in  his 
pocket.  He  is  like  a  stout  ship,  which  will  weather  the  roughest 
storm  uninju^i,  but  roll  its  masts  overboard  in  the  succeeding  calm. 

"  He  is  a^Be  fond  of  playing  the  magnifico  abroad  ;  of  pulling  out 
a  long  purse  ;  flinging  his  money  bravely  about  at  boxing  matches, 
horse* races,  cock  fights,  and  carrying  a  high  head  among  'gentlemen 
of  the  fancy ; '  but  immediately  after  one  of  these  fits  of  extravagance, 
he  will  be  taken  with  violent  qualms  of  economy ;  talk  desperately  of 
i^k;  ruined  and  brought  upon  the  parish ;  and,  in  such  moods,  will 
nQHtiy  the  smallest  tradesman's  Mil,  without  violent  altercation.  He 
is  in  fact  the  most  punctual  and  discontented  paymaster  in  the  world ; 
drawing  bis  coin  out  of  his  breeches  pocket  witli  infinite  reluctance  ; 
paying  to  the  uttermost  farthing,  but  accompanying  every  guinea  with 
a  growl. 

"  With  all  his  talk  of  economy,  however,  he  is  a  bountiful  provider, 
and  a  hospitable  housekeeper.  His  economy  is  of  a  whimsical  kind, 
its  chief  object  being  to  device  how  he  may  afford  to  be  extravagant ; 
for  he  will  begrudge  himself  a  beef-steak  and  pint  of  port  one  day, 
that  he  may  roast  an  ox  whole,  broach  a  hogshead  of  ale,  and  treat 
all  his  neighbours  on  the  next." 

In  «  Bracebridge  Hall"  and  the  "Tales  of  a  Traveller," 
works  which  followed  the  "  Sketch  Book,"  Irving  did  little 
more  than  continue  the  sort  of  thing  which  he  had  done  in  the 
first.  Perhaps  his  most  noteworthy  feat  in  all  , three  books  is 
that  he  made  prominent  in  English  literature  a  literary  form 
in  which  for  a  long  time  to  come  Americans  excelled  native 
Englishmen,  —  the  short  story.  During  our  century,  of 
ourse,  England  has  produced  a  great  school  of  fiction ;  and 

cept  for  Cooper  and  one  or  two  living  writers,  America 
can  hardly  show  full-grown  novels  so  good  even  as  those  of 
Anthony  Trollope,  not  to  speak  of  the  masterpieces  of  Dick 
ens,  Thackeray,  and  George  Eliot.  Certainly  until  the  time  of 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  however,  no  English-speaking  writer 
out  of  Agnerica  had  produced  many  short  stories  of  such 
merit  as  anybody  can  recognise  in  the  work  of  Hawthorne 


IRVING  17; 

and  Poe  and  Irving.  In  this  fact  there  is  something  akin  to 
that  other  fact  which  we  have  just  remarked,  —  the  formal 
superiority  of  Irving's  style  to  that  of  contemporary  English 
men.  The  English  novel,  whatever  its  merits,  runs  to  inter 
minable  length,  with  a  disregard  of  form  unprecedented  in 
other  civilised  literature.  A  good  short  story,  on  the  other 
hand,  must  generally  have  complete  and  finished  form.  Now, 
during  the  nineteenth  century  American  men  of  letters  have 
usually  had  a  more  conscious  sense  of  form  than  their  English 
contemporaries.  The  American  conscience,  in  fact,  always 
a  bit  overdeveloped,  has  sometimes  seemed  evident  in  our 
attempts  at  literary  art.  No  one  who  lacks  artistic  conscience 
can  write  an  effective  short  story ;  and  it  is  doubtful  whether 
any  one  troubled  with  much  artistic  conscience  can  write  in  less 
than  a  lifetime  a  three-volume  novel.  The  artistic  conscience 
revealed  in  the  finish  of  Irving's  style  and  in  his  mastery  of 
the  short  story,  then,  may  be  called  characteristic  of  his 
country. 

Equally  characteristic  of  America,  in  the  somewhat  different 
manner  foreshadowed  by  "  Bracebridge  Hall  "  and  the  "  Tales 
of  a  Traveller,"  are  the  series  of  Irving's  writings,  between 
1828  and  1832,  which  deal  with  Spain.  He  was  first 
attracted  thither  by  a  proposition  that  he  should  translate  a 
Spanish  book  concerning  Columbus.  Instead  of  so  doing,  he 
ended  by  writing  his  u  Life  of  Columbus,"  which  was  fol 
lowed  by  his  "  Conquest  of  Granada  "  and  his  "  Tales  of  the 
Alhambra."  For  Americans,  Spain  has  sometimes  had  more 
romantic  charm  than  all  the  rest  of  Europe  put  together.  In 
the  first  place,  as  the  very  name  of  Columbus  should  remind 
us,  its  history  is  inextricably  connected  with  our  own.  In 
the  second  place,  at  the  very  moment  when  this  lasting  con 
nection  between  Spain  and  the  New  World  declared  itself, 
the  eight  hundred  years'  struggle  between  Moors  and  Spaniards 
had  at  length  ended  in  the  triumph  of  the  Christians  ;  and  no 
other  conflict  of  the  whole  European  past  involved  a  contrast 

12 


1 78          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

of  life  and  of  ideals  more  vivid,  more  complete,  more  varied, 
or  more  prolonged.  In  the  third  place,  the  decline  of  Spain 
began  almost  immediately ;  so  in  the  early  nineteenth  century 
Spain  had  altered  less  since  the  middle  ages  than  any  other 
part  of  Europe.  Elsewhere  an  American  traveller  could  find 
traces  of  the  picturesque,  romantic,  vanished  past.  In  Spain 
he  could  find  a  state  of  life  so  little  changed  from  olden  time 
that  he  seemed  almost  to  travel  into  that  vanished  past  it 
self. 

Now,  as  the  American  character  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  has  declared  itself,  few  of  its  aesthetic  traits  are  more 
marked  than  eager  delight  in  olden  splendours.  Such  delight, 
of  course,  has  characterised  the  nineteenth  century  in  Europe 
as  well  as  among  ourselves.  A  modern  Londoner,  however, 
who  can  walk  in  a  forenoon  from  Westminster  Abbey  to  the 
Temple  Church  and  so  to  the  Tower,  can  never  dream  of 
what  such  monuments  mean  to  an  imagination  ,.  which  has 
grown  up  amid  no  grander  relics  of  antiquity  than  King's 
Chapel  or  Independence  Hall,  than  gray  New  England  farm 
houses  and  the  moss-grown  gravestones  of  Yankee  burying- 
grounds.  To  any  sensitive  nature,  brought  up  in  nineteenth- 
century  America,  the  mere  sight  of  anything  so  immemorially 
human  as  a  European  landscape  must  have  in  it  some  touch 
of  that  stimulating  power  which  the  Europe  of  the  Renais 
sance  found  in  the  fresh  discovery  of  classical  literature  and  art. 
Americans  can  still  feel  the  romance  even  of  modern  London 
or  Paris ;  and  to  this  day  there  is  no  spot  where  our  starved 
craving  for  human  antiquity  can  be  more  profusely  satisfied 
than  amid  the  decaying  but  not  vanished  monuments  of  Chris 
tian  and  of  Moorish  Spain.  No  words  have  ever  expressed 
this  satisfaction  more  sincerely  or  more  spontaneously  than  the 
fantastic  stories  of  old  Spain  which  Irving  has  left  us. 

His  later  work  was  chiefly  biographical.  His  "  Life  of 
Goldsmith  "  and  his  "  Life  of  Washington  "  alike  are  written 
with  all  his  charm  and  with  vivid  imagination.  Irving,  how- 


IRVING  179 

ever,  was  no  trained  scholar.  He  was  far  even  from  the 
critical  habit  of  the  New  England  historians,  and  further  still 
from  such  learning  as  is  now  apt  to  make  history  something 
like  exact  science.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  Irving's 
Goldsmith  or  his  Washington  can  be  accepted  as  the  Gold 
smith  or  the  Washington  who  once  trod  the  earth ;  yet  his 
Goldsmith  and  Washington,  and  the  other  personages  whom 
he  introduced  into  their  stories,  are  at  least  living  human 
beings.  His  work  is  perhaps  halfway  between  history  and 
fiction ;  imaginative  history  is  perhaps  the  best  name  for  it. 
As  usual,  he  was  preoccupied  almost  as  much  with  a  desire 
to  write  charmingly  as  with  a  purpose  to  write  truly ;  but  in 
itself  this  desire  was  beautifully  true.  Throughout,  one  feels, 
Irving  wrote  as  well  as  he  could,  and  he  knew  how  to  write 
better  than  almost  any  contemporary  Englishman. 

No  doubt  a  great  deal  of  English  work  contemporary  with 
Irving' s  is  of  deeper  value.  Our  hasty  glance  at  his  literary 
career  has  perhaps  shown  what  this  first  of  our  recognised  / 
men  of  letters — the  first  American  who  in  his  own  lifetime^ 
established  a  lasting  European  reputation  —  really  accom 
plished.  His  greatest  merits,  which  nothing  can  abate,  are  per 
vasive  artistic  conscience,  admirable  and  persistent  sense  of  form, 
and  constant  devotion  to  his  literary  ideals.  If  we  ask  our 
selves,  however,  what  he  used  his  admirable  style  to  express, 
we  find  in  the  first  place  a  quaintly  extravagant  sort  of  humour 
growing  more  delicate  with  the  years ;  next  we  find  romantic 
sentiment  set  forth  in  the  beautifully  polished  phrases  of  a  past 
English  generation  whose  native  temper  had  been  rather  classi 
cal  than  romantic  ;  then  we  find  a  deeply  lasting  delight  in 
the  splendours  of  an  unfathomably  romantic  past ;  and  finally 
we  come  to  pleasantly  vivid  romantic  biographies.  One  thing 
here  is  pretty  clear :  the  man  had  no  message.  From  begin 
ning  to  end  he  was  animated  by  no  profound  sense  of  the 
mystery  of  existence.  Neither  the  solemn  eternities  which 
stir  philosophers  and  theologians,  nor  the  actual  lessons  as  dis- 


i8o          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

tinguished  from  the  superficial  circumstances  of  human  ex 
perience,  ever  much  engaged  his  thought.  Delicate,  refined, 
romantic  sentiment  he  set  forth  in  delicate,  refined  classic 
style.  One  may  often  wonder  whether  he  had  much  to  say ; 
one  can  never  question  that  he  wrote  beautifully. 

This  was  the  first  recognised  literary  revelation  of  the  New 
World  to  the  Old.  In  a  previous  generation,  Edwards  had 
made  American  theology  a  fact  for  all  Calvinists  to  reckon 
with.  The  political  philosophers  of  the  Revolution  had  made 
our  political  and  legal  thought  matters  which  even  the  Old 
World  could  hardly  neglect.  When  we  come  to  pure  litera 
ture,  however,  in  which  America  should  at  last  express  to 
Europe  what  life  meant  to  men  of  artistic  sensitiveness  living 
under  the  conditions  of  our  new  and  emancipated  society, 
what  we  find  is  little  more  than  greater  delicacy  of  form  than 
existed  in  contemporary  England.  Irving  is  certainly  a  per 
manent  literary  figure.  What  makes  him  so  is  not  novelty  or 
power,  but  charming  refinement. 


Ill 

JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 

IN  1820,  American  literature,  at  least  so  far  as  it  has  survived 
even  in  tradition,  consisted  of  the  work  of  Brockden  Brown, 
then  ten  years  dead,  and  of  Irving's  "  Sketch  Book,"  the  first 
edition  of  which  had  appeared  the  year  before.  Apart  from 
these  works,  what  had  been  produced  in  this  country  was  so 
obviously  imitative  as  to  express  only  a  sense  on  the  part  of 
our  numerous  writers  that  they  ought  to  copy  the  eminent 
authors  of  England.  In  1820  appeared  the  first  work  of  a 
new  novelist,  soon  to  attain  not  only  permanent  reputation  in 
America,  but  also  a  European  recognition  more  general  than 
Irving's,  if  not  so  critically  admiring.  This  was  James 
Fenimore  Cooper. 

He  was  born  in  New  Jersey  in  1789.  When  he  was 
about  a  year  old  his  father,  a  gentleman  of  means,  migrated  to 
that  region  in  the  wilderness  of  Central  New  York  where 
Cooperstown  now  preserves  his  name.  Here  the  father 
founded  and  christened  the  settlement  where  for  the  rest  of 
his  life  he  maintained  a  position  of  almost  feudal  superiority. 
Here,  in  a  country  so  wild  as  to  be  almost  primeval,  Cooper 
was  brought  up.  Before  he  was  fourteen  years  old  he  went 
to  Yale  College,  then  in  charge  of  its  great  President,  Timothy 
Dwight ;  but  some  academic  trouble  brought  his  college  career 
to  a  premature  end.  The  years  between  1806  and  1810  he 
spent  at  sea,  first  as  a  kind  of  apprentice  on  a  merchant 
vessel,  afterward  as  an  officer  in  the  navy.  In  1811,  having 
married  a  lady  of  the  Tory  family  of  De  Lancey,  he  resigned 
his  commission. 


1 82          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

After  several  years  of  inconspicuous  life  —  he  was  living  at 
the  time  in  the  country  near  New  York  City  —  he  read  some 
now  forgotten  but  temporarily  fashionable  English  novel  ;  and 
stirred  by  the  notion  that  he  could  write  a  better,  he  rapidly 
produced  a  story,  now  almost  as  forgotten  as  its  model,  en 
titled  "  Precaution."  This,  published  in  1820,  was  a  tale  of 
fashionable  life  in  England,  of  which  at  the  time  Cooper  knew 
very  little.  It  had  a  measure  of  success,  being  mistaken  for 
the  anonymous  work  of  some  English  woman  of  fashion. 
In  the  following  year  Cooper  produced  "  The  Spy,"  an  histori 
cal  novel  of  the  American  Revolution,  then  less  than  fifty 
years  past.  In  1823  came  "The  Pioneers,"  the  first  in  pub 
lication  of  his  Leather-Stocking  tales  ;  and  just  at  the  begin 
ning  of  1824  appeared  "  The  Pilot,"  the  first  of  his  stories  of 
the  sea.  u  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  perhaps  his  master 
piece,  was  published  in  1826.  In  that  year  he  went  abroad, 
where  he  remained  for  seven  years.  He  then  came  home, 
and  resided  for  most  of  the  rest  of  his  life  on  the  ancestral 
estate  at  Cooperstown,  where  he  died  in  1851.  Peculiarities 
of  temper  kept  him  throughout  his  later  years  in  chronic 
quarrels  with  the  public,  with  his  neighbours,  and  with  almost 
everybody  but  some  of  his  personal  friends,  who  remained 
strongly  attached  to  him. 

At  the  age  of  thirty,  as  we  have  seen,  Cooper  had  never 
published  anything  ;  he  died  at  the  age  of  sixty-two ;  and  in 
the  incomplete  list  of  his  writings  appended  to  Professor 
Lounsbury's  biography  of  him  there  are  some  seventy  entries. 
Of  these  hastily  written  works  a  number  dealt  with  matters 
of  fact ;  for  one  thing,  with  characteristic  asperity  and  lack  of 
tact,  he  wrote  books  about  both  America  and  England,  in 
which,  when  discussing  either  country,  he  seemed  chiefly  ani 
mated  by  a  desire  to  emphasise  those  truths  which  would  be 
least  welcome  to  the  people  concerned.  He  wrote,  too,  a 
considerable  history  of  the  American  Navy  which  generously 
contributed  to  his  personal  difficulties.  For  years  there  had 


COOPER  183 

been  a  dispute  among  naval  people  as  to  the  comparative 
merit  in  the  battle  of  Lake  Erie  of  Perry,  whose  name  is 
permanently  associated  with  that  victory,  and  his  second  in 
command,  a  subsequently  distinguished  officer  named  Elliott. 
In  his  account  of  this  battle,  Cooper  reserved  his  opinion, 
simply  stating  facts ;  he  was  consequently  held  by  the  parti 
sans  both  of  Elliott  and  of  Perry  to  have  been  what  they 
certainly  became,  —  venomously  libellous.  And  long  before 
the  naval  history  appeared,  he  was  already  prosecuting  news 
paper  after  newspaper  for  personal  criticisms,  which  but  for 
these  prosecutions — technically  successful,  by  the  way, — 
would  long  ago  have  been  forgotten. 

A  glance  at  Professor  Lounsbury's  bibliography,  however, 
will  show  that  with  one  exception  all  of  Cooper's  works 
which  fall  into  this  invidious  class  were  written  after  the  year 
in  which  Sir  Walter  Scott  died,  1832;  and  that  meantime, 
between  1820  and  that  date,  he  had  produced  at  least  ten 
novels  which  have  maintained  their  position  in  literature. 
What  is  more,  these  novels  almost  immediately  attained  world 
wide  reputation ;  they  were  translated  not  only  into  French, 
but  also  into  many  other  languages  of  continental  Europe,  in 
which  they  preserve  popularity.  Great  as  was  his  success 
at  home  and  in  England,  indeed,  it  is  sometimes  said  to  have 
been  exceeded  by  that  which  he  has  enjoyed  throughout  con 
tinental  Europe.  For  this  there  is  a  reason  which  has  been; 
little  remarked.  The  mere  number  and  bulk  of  Cooper's 
(  works  bear  evidence  to  the  fact  that  he  must  have  written  with 
careless  haste.)  He  had  small  literary  training  and  little  more 
tact  in  the  matter  of  style  than  he  displayed  in  his  personal 
relations  with  people  who  did  not  enjoy  his  respect.  Cooper's 
English,  then,  is  often  ponderous  and  generally  clumsy.  An 
odd  result  follows.  His  style  is  frequently  such  as  could 
hardly  be  altered  except  for  the  better.  A  translator  into 
whatever  language  can  often  say  what  Cooper  said  in  a  form 
more  readable  and  agreeable  than  Cooper's  own.  Many  of 


1 84          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

the   minor  passages   in   his  writings  seem  more  felicitous  in 
French  translation  than  in  his  own  words. 

Yet  his  own  words,  though  even  in  his  best  work  impaired 
by  clumsiness  and  prolixity,  are  well  worth  reading.  He  has 
been  called  the  American  Scott,  and  indeed  was  so  called  in 
his  own  time,  for  his  reputation  was  literally  contemporary 
with  Sir  Walter's.  u  The  Spy  "  appeared  in  the  same  year 
with  "  Kenilworth  "  and  "  The  Pirate ;  "  "  The  Pilot  "  in  the 
year  of  "  Quentin  Durward."  Now,  Scott  and  Cooper  really 
belong  to  different  categories  of  merit.  Scott,  saturated  with 
the  traditions  of  a  brave  old  human  world,  was  gifted  with 
an  imagination  so  robust  as  to  have  invented  in  the  historical 
novel  a  virtually  new  form  of  literature,  and  to  have  enlivened 
it  with  a  host  of  characters  so  vital  that  among  the  creatures 
of  English  imagination  his  personages  rank  almost  next  to 
Shakspere's.  When  Cooper  began  to  write,  "  Waverley  " 
was  already  about  six  years  old.  In  a  certain  sense,  then,  he 
may  be  said  to  have  imitated  Scott ;  it  is  doubtful,  however, 
whether  he  was  by  any  means  so  conscious  of  his  model 
as  Brockden  Brown  was  of  Godwin,  or  Irving  of  Goldsmith. 
The  resemblance  between  Cooper  and  Scott  lies  chiefly  in  the 
fact  that  each  did  his  best  work  in  fiction  dealing  with  the 
romantic  past  of  his  own  country.  By  just  so  much,  then,  as 
the  past  of  Cooper's  America  was  a  slighter,  less  varied,  less 
human  past  than  that  of  Scott's  England  or  Scotland,  Cooper's 
work  must  remain  inferior  to  Scott's  in  human  interest. 
Partly  for  the  same  reason,  the  range  of  character  created  by 
Cooper  is  at  once  less  wide  and  far  less  highly  developed 
than  that  brought  into  being  by  Sir  Walter.  Cooper,  in 
deed,  as  the  very  difficulties  of  his  later  life  would  show,  was 
temperamentally  narrow  in  sympathy.  It  happened,  for  ex 
ample,  that  he  was  an  Episcopalian ;  consequently,  if  for  no 
other  reason,  he  detested  the  New  England  Puritans.  Now 
and  again  he  introduced  them  into  his  novels  ;  and  although 
he  was  too  honest  intentionally  to  misrepresent  them,  malig- 


COOPER  185 

nant  caricature  could  hardly  have  strayed  much  further  from 
the  truth.  And  so  on ;  to  compare  Cooper  with  Scott,  in 
deed,  except  for  the  matter  of  popularity,  in  which  they 
have  often  been  neck  and  neck,  is  needlessly  to  belittle 
Cooper.  Here  we  may  better  consider  him  in  connection 
with  his  American  contemporaries. 

When  "  The  Spy  "  was  published,  the  novels  of  Brockden 
Brown  were  already  almost  forgotten ;  and  Irving  had  pro 
duced  only  "The  Knickerbocker  History"  and  the  admirable 
essays  of  his  "  Sketch  Book."  "  The  Spy  "  is  an  historical 
novel  of  the  American  Revolution,  often  conventional,  but  at 
the  same  time  set  in  a  vivid  background ;  for  Cooper,  actually 
living  in  the  country  where  he  laid  his  scenes,  sincerely  en 
deavoured  not  only  to  revive  the  fading  past,  but  to  do 
full  justice  to  both  sides  in  that  great  conflict  which  dis 
united  the  English-speaking  races.  In  "  The  Pilot "  we 
have  a  somewhat  similar  state  of  things;  but  here,  instead  of 
laying  the  scene  on  American  soil,  Cooper  lays  it  for  the  first 
time  in  literature  aboard  an  American  ship.  u  The  Pilot  "  is 
very  uneven.  The  plot  is  conventionally  trivial ;  and  most  of 
the  characters  are  more  so  still.  But  Long  Tom  Coffin  is  a 
living  Yankee  sailor  ;  and  when  we  come  to  the  sea,  with 
its  endless  variety  of  weather,  and  to  sea-fights,  such  as  that 
between  the  "  Ariel "  and  the  "  Alacrity,"  it  is  hardly  ex 
cessive  to  say  that  there  is  little  better  in  print.  If  the  plot 
and  the  characters  had  been  half  so  good  as  the  wonderful 
marine  background  in  which  they  are  set,  the  book  would  have 
been  a  masterpiece. 

Something  similar  may  be  said  of  the  Leather-Stocking 
stories, of  which  "The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  published  in 
1826,  is  probably  the  best.  The  trivially  conventional  plots 
concern  characters  not  particularly  like  anything  recorded  in  — - 
human  history.  Lowell's  comment  on  them  in  the  "  Fable 
for  Critics "  is  not  unfair ;  after  declaring  Natty  Bumppo 
vital  enough  to  be  named  in  the  same  breath  with  Parson 


1 86          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

Adams,  and   doing  surprisingly   scant  justice  to   Long  Tom 
Coffin,  he  proceeds  thus  :  — 

"  All  his  other  men-figures  are  clothes  upon  sticks, 
The  derniere  chemise  of  a  man  in  a  fix, 
(As  a  captain  besieged,  when  his  garrison  's  small, 
Sets  up  caps  upon  poles  to  be  seen  o'er  the  wall) ; 
And  the  women  he  draws  from  one  model  don't  vary, 
All  sappy  as  maples  and  flat  as  a  prairie. 
When  a  character  's  wanted,  he  goes  to  the  task 
As  a  cooper  would  do  in  composing  a  cask  ; 
He  picks  out  the  staves,  of  their  qualities  heedful, 
Just  hoops  them  together  as  tight  as  is  needful, 
And,  if  the  best  fortune  should  crown  the  attempt,  he 
Has  made  at  the  most  something  wooden  and  empty." 

Cooper's  noble  Indians,  in  fact,  are  rather  more  like  the 
dreams  of  eighteenth-century  France  concerning  aboriginal 
human  nature  than  anything  critically  observed  by  ethnology  ; 
and  Natty  Bumppo  himself  is  a  creature  rather  of  romantic 
fancy  than  of  creative  sympathy  with  human  nature.  The 
woods  and  the  inland  waters,  on  the  other  hand,  amid  which 
the  scenes  of  these  stories  unroll  themselves,  are  true  American 
forests  and  lakes  and  streams.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  Cooper  introduced  to  human  recognition  certain  aspects 
of  Nature  unknown  to  literature  before  his  time,  and  of  a  kind 
which  could  have  been  perceived  and  set  forth  only  by  an 
enthusiastic  native  of  that  newest  of  nations  to  which  he  was 
so  devotedly  attached. 

For,  in  spite  of  his  later  quarrels  with  his  countrymen, 
Cooper  was  an  intensely  patriotic  American.  He  chanced, 
however,  to  be  of  a  temper  not  generally  characteristic  of 
our  country,  and  partly  to  be  accounted  for  by  his  personal 
origin.  His  father  had  been  something  like  a  feudal  lord  in 
the  savage  country  where  Cooper's  boyhood  was  passed ; 
and  the  son  could  not  help  inheriting  a  certain  instinct  of  per 
sonal  superiority,  or  at  least  of  personal  independence,  pecu 
liarly  foreign  to  that  sensitive  consciousness  of  majorities  which 


COOPER  1 8; 

has  often  made  Americans  so  slow  to  express  unpopular  opin 
ions.  Cooper,  too,  had  strong  prejudices  ;  and  when  brought* 
face  to  face  with  anything  he  did  not  like,  he  was  given  to 
expressing  disapprobation  with  a  vigour  more  characteristic 
of  the  English  than  of  ourselves.  Though  he  thoroughly 
loved  his  country,  he  saw  in  it  traits  which  by  no  means 
delighted  him.  So  in  his  "  Notions  of  the  Americans  Picked 
up  by  a  Travelling  Bachelor,"  published  in  1828,  when  his 
popularity  was  at  its  height,  he  expressed  concerning  our 
countrymen  views  which  may  be  summarised  in  the  statement 
that  Americans,  though  full  of  energy  and  other  admirable 
qualities,  have  a  blind  passion  for  money-seeking,  an  undue 
respect  for  popular  opinion,  and  an  irrepressible  tendency  to 
brag.  For  this  he  was  called  Anglomaniac ;  his  Anglo-/ 
mania  did  not  prevent  him  from  writing  just  as  frankly 
about  the  English,  of  whom  his  published  views  may  similarly 
be  summarised  in  the  statement  that  the  English  are  not  only 
the  most  efficiently  powerful  nation  in  the  world,  but  also  by 
far  the  most  snobbish.  Both  nations  resented  such  com 
ments.  Some  notion  of  the  amenities  of  criticisms  sixty  years 
ago  may  be  gained  from  a  few  phrases  which  were  conse 
quently  bestowed  upon  Cooper  both  in  England  and  in 
America.  In  1838  the  "New  Yorker"  wrote  of  him  as 
follows  :  "  He  is  as  proud  of  blackguarding  as  a  fishwoman  is 
of  Billingsgate.  It  is  as  natural  to  him  as  snarling  to  a  tom 
cat  or  growling  to  a  bull-dog.  .  .  .  He  has  the  scorn  and 
contempt  of  every  well-informed  American.  The  superlative 
dolt."  A  little  later  "  Eraser's  Magazine  "  called  him  a  "  bil 
ious  braggart,"  a  "  liar,"  a  "  full  jackass,"  an  "  insect,"  a 
"  grub,"  and  a  "  reptile." 

The  troubles  in  which  he  thus  involved  himself  during  his 
last  twenty  years  were  enhanced  not  only  by  those  which 
sprang  from  his  honest  effort  to  be  fair  in  his  History  of  the 
Navy,  but  by  quarrels  with  neighbours  at  Cooperstown,  con 
cerning  the  public  use  of  some  land  to  which  he  held  a 


1 88          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-185? 

clear  title,  and  by  various  infirmities  of  temper.  Intensely 
aristocratic  in  personal  feeling,  he  cherished  the  most  democratic 
general  sentiments,  believing  equally  in  the  rights  of  man  and 
in  the  vileness  of  any  actual  populace.  In  politics  he  was  a 
Democrat,  but  he  hated  free  trade  as  blindly  as  Tory  squire 
ever  loved  the  Corn  Laws ;  and  so  on.  One  can  begin  to 
see  why,  after  what  he  must  have  felt  to  be  a  lifetime  of  mis 
understanding  and  vexation,  he  wished  no  biography  of  him 
made. 

Yet,  after  all,  now  that  he  has  been  half  a  century  in  his 
grave,  little  memory  is  left  of  his  foibles  or  his  troubles.  The 
Cooper  who  persists  and  who  will  persist  in  popular  memory 
is  the  author  of  those  wholesome  novels  of  sea  and  of  forest 
which  were  the  first  American  writings  to  win  and  to  keep 
a  truly  wide  popularity.  In  touching  on  them  a  little  while 
ago,  we  remarked  the  extraordinary  truthfulness  of  their  back 
ground  ;  and  this,  probably,  is  the  trait  which  gives  them  their 
highest -positive  value.  It  is  hardly  to  so  unusual  a  quality, 
however,  that  they  have  owed  their  popular  vitality.  Their 
plots,  though  conventional,  are  put  together  with  considerable 
skill.  In  spite  of  prolixity  one  constantly  feels  curious  to  know 
what  is  coming  next.  In  spite  even  of  lifeless  characters,  this 
skilful  handling  of  plot  makes  one  again  and  again  feel  un 
expected  interest  concerning  what  these  personages  are  going 
to  do  or  what  is  going  to  happen  to  them.  As  we  have  seen 
already,  too,  crucial  episodes,  such  as  the  wreck  of  the  "  Ariel  " 
in  "  The  Pilot,"  possess,  in  spite  of  careless  phrasing,  a  vivid 
ness  and  a  bravery  sure  to  appeal  to  broad  human  temper. 

Cooper's  plots,  then,  if  commonplace,  are  often  interesting 
enough  to  atone  for  their  prolixity ;  and  whatever  the  con 
ventionality  of  his  characters,  the  spirit  of  his  books  is  vigor 
ously  brave  and  manly.  Excellent  as  these  traits  are,  however, 
they  are  not  specifically  American.  Another  trait  of  Cooper's 
work,  less  salient,  but  just  as  constant,  may  fairly  be  regarded 
as  national.  From  beginning  to  end  of  his  writings  there  is 


COOPER  189 

hardly  a  passage  which  anybody  would  hesitate  to  put  into 
the  hands  of  a  child  or  of  a  young  girl ;  nor  is  this  pervasive 
purity  apparently  deliberate.  The  scenes  of  his  novels  are 
often  laid  in  very  rough  places,  and  as  a  natural  consequence 
many  of  his  characters  and  incidents  are  of  a  rough,  adven 
turous  kind  5  but,  with  a  freedom  from  pruriency  as  instinctive 
as  his  robustness,  the  man  avoids  those  phases  of  rough  human 
life  which  recent  "  decadence "  has  generally  tended  either 
to  overemphasise  or  so  studiously  to  neglect  that  the  neglect 
amounts  to  emphasis.  Cooper's  temper  was  unaffectedly 
pure ;  and  purity  of  temper  is  probably  still  characteristic  of 
American  letters. 

Cooper  lived  until  1851,  and  Irving  lived  eight  years  longer. 
Both  men  wrote  until  they  died.  In  a  certain  way,  then, 
their  work  might  be  held  to  extend  to  a  distinctly  later  period 
than  that  in  which  we  are  considering  them ;  for  here  we 
have  treated  them  as  almost  contemporary  with  Brockden 
Brown,  who  died  in  1810.  In  another  aspect,  however, 
they  belong  very  early  in  the  history  of  American  letters. 
In  1798,  we  remember,  the  year  when  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge  published  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads,"  appeared  also 
Brockden  Brown's  u  Wieland,"  the  first  American  book 
which  has  survived.  In  1832  the  death  of  Sir  Walter  Scott 
brought  to  an  end  that  epoch  of  English  letters  which  the 
u  Lyrical  Ballads "  may  be  said  to  have  opened.  In  that 
year,  of  course,  Brown  had  long  been  dead ;  and  both  Irving 
and  Cooper  had  still  some  years  to  write.  The  reputation 
of  each,  however,  was  virtually  complete.  Irving  had  al 
ready  published  his  "  Knickerbocker  History,"  his  "  Sketch 
Book,"  his  "  Bracebridge  Hall,"  his  «  Tales  of  a  Traveller," 
his  "  Life  of  Columbus,"  his  "  Fall  of  Granada,"  and  his 
"Alhambra;"  nothing  later  materially  increased  his  reputation. 
Cooper  had  published  "  The  Spy,"  « The  Pioneers,"  "  The 
Pilot,"  "  Lionel  Lincoln,"  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  "  The 
Prairie,"  the  "  Red  Rover,"  the  "  Wept  of  Wish-ton- Wish," 


190          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

"  The  Water  Witch,"  and  the  "  Bravo."  When  Scott  died, 
then,  Cooper,  too,  had  produced  enough  to  make  his  reputa 
tion  permanent;  nothing  which  he  wrote  later  much  en 
hanced  it. 

The  three  writers  whom  we  have  considered  —  Brockden 
Brown,  Irving,  and  Cooper  —  were  the  only  Americans  who 
between  1798  and  1832  achieved  lasting  names  in  prose. 
Though  they  form  no  school,  though  they  are  very  different 
from  one  another,  two  or  three  things  may  be  said  of  them 
in  common.  They  all  developed  in  the  Middle  States ;  the 
names  of  all  are  associated  with  the  chief  city  of  that  region, 
New  York.  The  most  significant  work  of  all  assumed  a  form 
which  in  the  general  history  of  literatures  comes  not  early  but 
late,  —  prose  fiction.  This  form,  meantime,  happened  to  be 
on  the  whole  that  which  was  most  popular  in  contemporary 
England.  Again,  in  the  previous  literature  of  America,  if 
literature  it  may  be  called,  two  serious  motives  were  expressed. 
In  the  first  place,  particularly  in  New  England,  there  was  a 
considerable  development  of  theologic  thought ;  the  serious 
Yankee  mind  was  centred  on  the  eternities.  A  little  later, 
partly  in  New  England,  but  more  in  Virginia  and  in  New 
York,  there  was  admirable  political  writing.  These  two 
motives  —  the  one  characteristic  of  the  earliest  type  of  native 
American,  the  second  of  that  second  type  which  politically 
expressed  itself  in  the  American  Revolution  —  may  be  regarded 
as  expressions  in  this  country  of  the  two  ideals  most  deeply 
inherent  in  our  native  language,  —  those  of  the  Bible  and  of 
the  Common  Law.  Whatever  the  ultimate  significance  of 
American  writing  during  the  seventeenth  or  the  eighteenth 
centuries,  then,  such  of  it  as  now  remains  worthy  of  attention 
is  earnest  in  purpose,  dealing  either  with  the  eternal  destinies 
of  mankind  or  with  deep  problems  of  political  conduct.  In 
our  first  purely  literary  expression,  on  the  other  hand,  a  differ 
ent  temper  appears.  Neither  Brown  nor  Irving  nor  Cooper 
has  left  us  anything  profoundly  significant.  All  three  are 


COOPER  191 

properly  remembered  as  writers  of  wholesome  fiction;  and  the 
object  of  wholesome  fiction  is  neither  to  lead  men  heaven 
ward  nor  to  teach  them  how  to  behave  on  earth  ;  it  is  rather 
to  please.  There  is  a  commonplace  which  divides  great  litera 
ture  into  the  literature  of  knowledge,  which  enlarges  the  in 
tellect,  and  that  of  power,  which  stimulates  the  emotions  until 
they  become  living  motives.  Such  work  as  Brockden  Brown's 
or  Irving's  or  Cooper's  can  hardly  be  put  in  either  category. 
Theirs  is  rather  a  literature  of  wholesome  pleasure.  Nor  can 
one  long  look  at  them  together  without  tending  to  the  con 
clusion  that  the  most  apt  of  the  forms  in  which  their  peculiar 
literature  of  wholesome  pleasure  was  cast  is  that  short  story 
which  the  American  Irving  first  perfected  in  English. 

This  prose  on  which  we  have  now  touched  was  the  most 
important  literature  produced  in  New  York,  or  indeed  in 
America,  during  the  period  which  was  marked  in  England  by 
everything  between  the  "  Lyrical  Ballads  "  and  the  death  of 
Scott.  Even  in  America,  however,  the  time  had  its  poetry. 
At  this  we  must  now  glance. 


IV 

WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT 

IN  the  early  summer  of  1878  there  died  at  New  York,  from 
a  sunstroke  received  just  after  delivering  a  speech  at  the  un 
veiling  of  a  monument  in  Central  Park,  William  Cullen  Bry 
ant,  by  far  the  most  eminent  man  of  letters  in  our  chief  city. 
The  circumstances  of  his  death  show  how  thoroughly  he  re 
tained  his  vitality  to  the  end ;  and  his  striking  personal  ap 
pearance  combined  with  the  extreme  physical  activity  which 
kept  him  constantly  in  the  streets  to  make  him  a  familiar  local 
figure.  To  any  one  who  can  remember  New  York  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  then,  the  memory  of  Bryant  must  be  so  vivid 
as  to  make  startling  the  truth  that  if  he  had  lived  till  now 
he  would  have  been  well  past  his  century. 

In  his  later  years  the  younger  generation  of  Americans  who 
were  beginning  to  feel  interest  in  literature  had  a  way  of 
rather  deriding  him.  They  were  told  that  he  was  a  great 
poet ;  and  turning  to  the  numerous  collections  of  his  works, 
they  found  little  which  impressed  them  as  better  than  respect 
ably  commonplace.  The  prolonged  life  of  the  man,  in  fact, 
had  combined  with  his  unusual  physical  vitality  to  make 
people  forget  that  his  first  published  work  —  a  very  precocious 
one,  to  be  sure,  —  had  appeared  before  Brockden  Brown  died, 
in  the  same  year  with  Scott's  "  Marmion  ;  "  and  that  this  re 
mote  1808  had  seen  the  "Quarterly  Review"  founded  in 
England,  and  Andover  Seminary  in  Massachusetts.  They  for 
got  that  Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis,"  presented  to  them  as  the 
work  of  a  contemporary  and  vigorous  man  of  letters,  had  been 
printed  in  1817,  the  year  in  which  Byron  wrote  "  Manfred," 


BRYANT  193 

in  which  Jane  Austen  died,  in  which  Coleridge  produced  his 
"  Biographia  Literaria,"  and  Keats  the  first  volume  of  his 
poems,  and  Mrs.  Shelley  her  u  Frankenstein,"  and  Moore  his 
"  Lalla  Rookh."  They  forgot  that  a  collected  edition  of 
Bryant's  poems  had  appeared  in  1821,  the  year  when  Keats 
died,  when  the  first  version  of  De  Quincey's  "  Opium-Eater  " 
came  into  existence,  when  Scott  published  "  Kenilworth  "  and 
the  u  Pirate,"  and  Shelley  "  Adonais."  And  incidentally  they 
forgot  what  Bryant's  general  bearing  rather  encouraged  them 
to  forget,  that  besides  being  what  he  preferred  to  think  him 
self,  a  poet,  he  was  the  most  admirably  successful  journalist 
whom  America  has  yet  produced.  For  a  full  half-century  he 
was  at  the  head  of  the  New  York  "  Evening  Post,"  which 
brought  him  the  rare  reward  of  a  considerable  personal  fortune 
earned  by  a  newspaper  in  which  from  beginning  to  end  the 
editor  could  feel  honest  pride.  As  a  journalist,  indeed,  Bryant 
belongs  almost  to  our  own  time.  As  a  poet,  however, — and 
it  is  as  a  poet  that  we  are  considering  him  here,  —  he  belongs 
to  the  earliest  period  of  our  native  letters. 

He  was  born,  the  son  of  a  country  doctor,  at  Cumming- 
ton,  a  small  town  of  Western  Massachusetts,  in  1794.  At 
that  time  a  country  doctor,  though  generally  poor,  was,  like 
the  minister  and  the  squire,  an  educated  man,  and  so  a  person 
of  local  eminence ;  and  Dr.  Bryant,  who  was  occasionally 
a  member  of  the  General  Court  at  Boston,  came  to  have  a 
considerable  acquaintance  among  the  better  sort  of  people  in 
Massachusetts.  The  son  was  extremely  precocious.  When 
he  was  only  thirteen  years  old,  verses  of  his  were  printed  in  a 
country  newspaper;  and  a  year  later,  in  1808,  his  satire  on 
President  Jefferson,  "  The  Embargo,"  was  brought  to  Boston 
by  his  admiring  father  and  actually  published.  The  only  par 
ticular  merit  of  this  poem  is  accuracy  of  rhyme  and  metre,  a 
trait  of  deliberate  excellence  which  Bryant  preserved  until  the 
end.  For  a  year  or  so  the  boy  went  to  Williams  College, 
but  as  his  father  was  too  poor  to  keep  him  there,  he  soon 

13 


194          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

entered  a  lawyer's  office.  Law,  however,  proved  by  nc 
means  congenial  to  him ;  he  wanted  to  be  a  man  of  letters. 
In  this  aspiration  his  father  sympathised ;  and  when  the  son 
was  twenty-three  years  of  age,  the  father  took  to  Boston  a 
collection  of  his  manuscripts  among  which  was  "  Thana- 
topsis,"  already  six  years  old. 

These  manuscripts  Dr.  Bryant  submitted  to  Mr.  Willard 
Phillips,  one  of  the  three  editors  of  the  "  North  American 
Review,"  then  lately  founded.  Delighted  with  the  verses, 
Phillips  showed  them  to  his  colleagues,  Mr.  Richard  Henry 
Dana  and  Professor  Edward  Tyrrell  Channing.  The  story 
of  the  way  in  which  these  gentlemen  received  the  poems 
throws  light  on  the  condition  of  American  letters  in  1817. 
According  to  Mr.  Parke  Godwin's  biography  of  Bryant, 
"they  listened  attentively  to  his  reading  of  them,  when  Dana, 
at  the  close,  remarked  with  a  quiet  smile  :  c  Ah  !  Phillips,  you 
have  been  imposed  upon  ;  no  one  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic 
is  capable  of  writing  such  verses/ >:  Four  years  later,  in 
1821,  Bryant  delivered  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  of 
Harvard  College  a  poem,  "  The  Ages,"  which  remains  his 
longest;  and  in  the  same  year  he  published  in  pamphlet  form 
eight  poems.  There  were  only  forty-four  pages  in  all ;  but 
among  the  poems  were  both  "  The  Waterfowl  "  and  "  Thana- 
topsis."  The  life  of  a  country  lawyer  becoming  more  and 
more  distasteful  to  him,  he  determined  to  move  to  town. 
He  thought  seriously  of  going  to  Boston,  —  a  city  with  which 
at  that  time  his  affiliations  were  stronger  than  with  any  other ; 
but  instead  he  cast  in  his  lot  with  New  York,  to  which  he 
finally  removed  in  1825. 

At  that  time  Brockden  Brown  had  been  dead  for  fifteen 
years,  and  the  reputations  of  Irving  and  of  Cooper  were  estab 
lished.  At  that  time,  too,  there  was  in  New  York  a  consider 
able  literary  activity  of  which  the  results  are  now  pretty 
generally  forgotten.  Whoever  is  curious  to  know  something 
about  it  may  turn  to  one  or  two  works  which  may  be  found 


BRYANT  195 

in  any  considerable  public  library.  One  is  Rufus  Wilmot 
Griswold's  "  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  published  in 
1842;  it  was  followed  within  ten  years  by  his  "  Prose  Writ 
ers  of  America  "  and  his  "  Female  Poets  of  America ;  "  and 
in  1856  came  the  first  edition  of  Evert  Augustus  Duyckinck's 
"  Cyclopedia  of  American  Literature."  A  comparison  of 
these  with  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  "  Library  of  American 
Literature "  will  surprisingly  reveal  how  much  has  been 
written  in  this  country  which  even  so  catholic  a  taste  as  that 
of  these  latest  editors  has  already  been  compelled  to  reject. 
Almost  the  only  survival  of  New  York  poetry  before  Bryant  I 
came  there,  indeed,  is  Samuel  Woodworth's  accidentally  pop-  1 
ular  "  Old  Oaken  Bucket."  The  mere  name  of  James  Kirke^  I 
Paulding,  to  be  sure,  who  was  associated  with  Irving  in  the 
u  Salmagundi  Papers,"  and  who  subsequently  wrote  a  number 
of  novels,  and  other  prose,  is  still  faintly  remembered ;  and 
so  are  the  names  rather  than  the  actual  work  of  two  poets, 
Joseph  Rodman  Drake  and  Fitz-Greene  Halleck. 

Drake,  born  in  1795,  had  died  in  1820.  He  was  a  gentle 
man  and  a  man  of  taste.  He  wrote  several  pretty  things, 
among  them  a  poem  published  after  his  death,  entitled  "  The 
Culprit  Fay."  This  conventional  tale  of  some  tiny  fairies, 
supposed  to  haunt  the  Hudson  River,  is  so  much  better  than 
American  poetry  had  previously  been  that  one  is  at  first  dis 
posed  to  speak  of  it  enthusiastically.  An  obvious  comparison 
puts  it  in  true  perspective.  Drake's  life  happened  nearly 
to  coincide  with  that  of  Keats.  Both  left  us  only  broken 
fragments  of  what  they  might  have  done,  had  they  been 
spared ;  but  the  contrast  between  these  fragments  tells  afresh 
the  story  of  American  letters.  Amid  the  full  fervour  of 
European  experience  Keats  produced  immortal  work ;  Drake, 
whose  whole  life  was  passed  amid  the  national  inexperience 
of  New  York,  produced  only  pretty  fancies.  When  he  tried 
heroics  he  could  make  no  better  verses  than  such  as  these 
from  his  poem  on  u  The  American  Flag  "  :  — 


196         THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

"  When  Freedom  from  her  mountain  height 

Unfurled  her  standard  to  the  air, 
She  tore  the  azure  robe  of  night, 

And  set  the  stars  of  glory  there. 
She  mingled  with  its  gorgeous  dyes, 
The  milky  baldric  of  the  skies, 
And  striped  its  pure  celestial  white 
With  streakings  of  the  morning  light ; 
Then  from  his  mansion  in  the  sun 
She  called  her  eagle  bearer  down, 
And  gave  into  his  mighty  hand 
The  symbol  of  her  chosen  land. 

"  Flag  of  the  free  heart's  hope  and  home  ! 

By  angel  hands  to  valour  given ; 
Thy  stars  have  lit  the  welkin  dome, 

And  all  thy  hues  were  born  in  heaven. 
Forever  float  that  standard  sheet ! 

Where  breathes  the  foe  but  falls  before  us, 
With  Freedom's  soil  beneath  our  feet, 

And  Freedom's  banner  streaming  o'er  us?  " 

Fitz-Greene  Halleck,  five  years  older,  survived  Drake  by 
forty-seven  years.  If  we  except  his  Campbell-like  "  Marco 
Bozzaris,"  however,  which  was  published  in  1825,  ms  °nly 
surviving  lines  are  comprised  in  the  first  stanza  of  his  poem  on 
the  death  of  Drake,  written  in  1820:  — 

"  Green  be  the  turf  above  thee, 
Friend  of  my  better  days  ! 
None  knew  thee  but  to  love  thee, 
Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise." 

In  1811,  Halleck  and  Drake  contributed  to  the  New  York 
"Evening  Post"  a  series  of  poetical  satires  entitled  "The 
Croaker  Papers;"  and  Halleck  published  a  mildly  satirical 
poem  entitled  "  Fanny,"  which  may  be  described  as  a  dilution 
of  Byron  with  Croton  water.  In  1827  he  brought  out  "  Aln- 
wick  Castle"  and  other  poems.  In  1832  his  poetic  career 
was  virtually  closed  by  his  acceptance  of  a  clerical  position  in 
the  employ  of  Mr.  John  Jacob  Astor.  The  general  insig 
nificance  of  New  York  letters  at  the  time  when  Bryant  first 


BRYANT  197 

came  to  the  town  is  in  no  way  better  typified  than  by  the  fact 
that  literary  work  so  inconsiderable  as  Halleck's  has  been 
deemed  worthy  of  a  bronze  statue,  still  sitting  cross-legged 
in  the  Grand  Alley  of  Central  Park. 

Compared  with  such  work  as  this,  there  is  no  wonder  that 
poems  like  u  Thanatopsis  "  and  "  The  Waterfowl  "  seemed  to 
the  early  editors  of  the  "  North  American  Review  "  too  good 
to  be  native ;  and,  as  we  have  seen,  Bryant's  life  and  activity 
were  so  prolonged  that  it  is  hard  to  remember  how  nearly  his 
poetical  work  was  accomplished  at  the  beginning  of  his  career. 
It  was  not  all  produced  at  once,  of  course ;  but,  as  is  often 
the  case  with  precocious  excellence, — with  men,  for  example, 
like  his  contemporaries,  Landor  and  Whittier,  —  even  though 
he  rarely  fell  below  his  own  first  level,  he  hardly  ever  sur 
passed  it.  This  is  clearly  seen  if  we  compare  the  familiar 
concluding  lines  of  "  Thanatopsis,"  written  before  he  was 
twenty-seven,  with  a  passage  of  about  equal  length  from 
"  Among  the  Trees,"  published  after  he  was  seventy.  The 
former  lines  run  thus  :  — 

"  So  live,  that  when  thy  summons  comes  to  join 
The  innumerable  caravan,  which  moves 
To  that  mysterious  realm,  where  each  shall  take 
His  chamber  in  the  silent  halls  of  death, 
Thou  go  not,  like  the  quarry-slave  at  night, 
Scourged  to  his  dungeon,  but,  sustained  and  soothed 
By  an  unfaltering  trust,  approach  thy  grave, 
Like  one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  couch 
About  him,  and  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams." 

The  latter  lines  are  these  :  — 

"  Ye  have  no  history.     I  ask  hi  vain 
Who  planted  on  the  slope  this  lofty  group 
Of  ancient  pear-trees  that  with  spring-time  burst 
Into  such  breadth  of  bloom.     One  bears  a  scar 
Where  the  quick  lightning  scorched  its  trunk,  yet  still 
It  feels  the  breath  of  Spring,  and  every  May 
Is  white  with  blossoms.     Who  it  was  that  laid 
Their  infant  roots  in  earth,  and  tenderly 


198          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-2857 

Cherished  the  delicate  sprays,  I  ask  in  vain, 
Yet  bless  the  unknown  hand  to  which  I  owe 
The  annual  festival  of  bees,  these  songs 
Of  birds  within  their  leafy  screen,  these  shouts 
Of  joy  from  children  gathering  up  the  fruit 
Shaken  in  August  from  the  willing  boughs." 

The  former  of  these  passages  is  the  work  of  an  inexperi 
enced  country  boy;  the  latter,  by  the  same  hand,  is  the  work 
of  an  old  man  who  had  made  a  fortune  as  the  most  successful 
journalist  in  New  York ;  but,  so  far  as  internal  evidence  goes, 
the  latter  might  almost  have  been  written  first.  Beyond  doubt, 
as  an  American  poet  Bryant  really  belongs  to  the  generation 
contemporary  with  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

In  the  year  of  Scott's  death,  indeed,  the  same  1832  which 
saw  in  England  the  passage  of  the  Reform  Bill  and  in  Amer 
ica  the  Nullification  Act  of  South  Carolina  and  President 
Jackson's  Bank  Veto,  Bryant  had  already  been  for  four  years 
at  the  head  of  the  "  Evening  Post,"  and  the  first  considerable 
edition  of  his  poems  appeared  both  in  England  and  in  America. 
Nothing  which  he  wrote  later,  except  perhaps  his  translations, 
—  some  admirable  versions  of  Spanish  lyrics,  which  are  said 
to  have  attracted  many  young  eyes  to  fascinating  romantic 
vistas,  and  far  later  his  well-known  rendering  of  Homer  — 
will  much  alter  the  impression  produced  by  this  early 
volume.  The  lifelong  evenness  of  his  work  seems  to  justify 
reference  at  this  point  to  what  he  wrote  about  poetry  many 
years  later.  In  1871  he  became  editor  of  a  "Library  of 
Poetry  and  Song,"  —  one  of  those  innumerable  anthologies 
which  are  from  time  to  time  inflicted  on  the  public,  either 
for  sale  by  country  book  agents  or  for  unacceptable  Christ 
mas  presents.  To  this  "  library "  Bryant  contributed  an 
introduction  in  which  he  stated  at  considerable  length  what 
he  conceived  to  be  the  most  important  qualities  of  lasting 
poetry.  The  trait  which  on  the  whole  he  most  valued  appears 
to  be  luminosity  :  "  The  best  poetry,"  he  says,  —  u  that  which 
takes  the  strongest  hold  on  the  general  mind,  not  in  one  age 


BRYANT 


199 


only  but  in  all  ages,  —  is  that  which  is  always   simple  and 
always  luminous." 

Simple  and  luminous  Bryant  was  from  beginning  to  end. 
For  this  simple  luminosity  he  paid  the  price  of  that  de 
liberate  coolness  which  Lowell  so  pitilessly  satirised  in  the 
"Fable  for  Critics,"  of  1848:- 

"  There  is  Bryant,  as  quiet,  as  cool,  and  as  dignified, 
As  a  smooth,  silent  iceberg,  that  never  is  ignified, 
Save  when  by  reflection  't  is  kindled  o'  nights 
With  a  semblance  of  flame  by  the  chill  Northern  Lights. 
He  may  rank  (Griswold  says  so)  first  bard  of  your  nation 
(There 's  no  doubt  he  stands  in  supreme  iceolation), 
Your  topmost  Parnassus  he  may  set  his  heel  on, 
But  no  warm  applauses  come,  peal  following  peal  on, — 
He  's  too  smooth  and  too  polished  to  hang  any  zeal  on; 
Unqualified  merits,  I  '11  grant,  if  you  choose,  he  has  'em, 
But  he  lacks  the  one  merit  of  kindling  enthusiasm  ; 
If  he  stir  you  at  all,  it  is  just,  on  my  soul, 
Like  being  stirred  up  with  the  very  North  Pole." 

If  Bryant's  careful  attention  to  luminosity,  however,  pre 
vented  him  from  ever  being  passionate,  and  gave  his  work  the 
character  so  often  mistaken  for  commonplace,  it  never  de 
prived  him  of  tender  delicacy.  Take,  for  example,  u  The 
Death  of  the  Flowers,"  of  which  the  opening  line  — 

"  The  melancholy  days  are  come,  the  saddest  of  the  year  "  — 

is   among  his   most  familiar.     The  last  two  stanzas   run  as 
follows :  — 

"And  now,  when  comes  the  calm  mild  day,  as  still  such  days  will 

come, 

To  call  the  squirrel  and  the  bee  from  out  their  winter  home ; 
When  the  sound  of  dropping  nuts  is  heard,  though  all  the  trees 

are  still, 

And  twinkle  in  the  smoky  light  the  waters  of  the  rill, 
The  south  wind  searches  for  the  flowers  whose  fragrance  late  he 

bore, 
And  sighs  to  find  them  in  the  wood  and  by  the  stream  no  more. 


200          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1837 

"  And  then  I  think  of  one  who  in  her  youthful  beauty  died, 
The  fair  meek  blossom  that  grew  up  and  faded  by  my  side. 
In  the  cold  moist  earth  we  laid  her,  when  the  forests  cast  the  leaf, 
And  we  wept  that  one  so  lovely  should  have  a  life  so  brief ; 
Yet  not  unmeet  it  was  that  one,  like  that  young  friend  of  ours, 
So  gentle  and  so  beautiful,  should  perish  with  the  flowers." 

To  a  generation  familiar  with  all  the  extravagances  of 
nineteenth-century  romanticism,  a  feeling  so  restrained,  so 
close  to  sentimentality,  as  this  —  expressed,  too,  with  such 
deliberate  luminosity,  —  may  well  seem  unimpassioned.  But 
one  cannot  dwell  on  these  lines  without  feeling  genuine  sweet 
ness  of  temper,  or  without  finally  discerning,  in  what  at  first 
seems  chilly  deliberation  of  phrase,  what  is  rather  a  loving 
care  for  every  syllable. 

The  allusion  in  the  last  stanza  is  to  the  early  death  from 
consumption  of  Bryant's  sister.  Only  a  few  years  before,  his 
father  had  died  of  the  same  disease.  So  he  had  personal 
reason  for  melancholy.  As  one  looks  through  his  work, 
however,  one  is  apt  to  wonder  whether,  even  if  his  life  had 
been  destitute  of  personal  bereavement,  his  verse  might  not 
still  have  hovered  sentimentally  about  the  dead.  His  most 
successful  poem,  "  Thanatopsis,"  was  apparently  written 
before  death  had  often  come  near  him  ;  and  it  is  hardly 
excessive  to  say  that  if  a  single  name  were  sought  for  his 
collected  works,  from  beginning  to  end,  a  version  of  that  bar 
barous  Greek  title  might  be  found  suitable,  and  the  whole 
volume  fairly  entitled  "  Glimpses  of  the  Grave."  Of  course 
he  touched  on  other  things ;  but  he  touched  on  mortality  so 
constantly  as  to  make  one  feel  regretfully  sure  that  whenever 
he  felt  stirred  to  poetry  his  fancy  started  for  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow  of  Death.  In  this,  of  course,  he  was  not  peculiar. 
The  subject  had  such  fascination  for  eighteenth-century  versi 
fiers  that  in  1751  Gray's  "Elegy"  made  of  it  a  master 
piece;  and  we  need  only  remember  those  mortuary  memorials 
wherein  the  hair  of  the  departed  is  woven  into  the  weeping 
willows  of  widowed  brooches,  to  be  reminded  how  general 


BRYANT  201 

this  kind  of  sentimentality  has  been.  This  underlying  im 
pulse  of  Bryant's  poetry,  however,  was  most  general  in  the 
eighteenth  century  ;  and  Bryant's  style  —  distinctly  affected 
by  that  of  Cowper,  and  still  more  by  that  of  Wordsworth  — 
belongs  rather  to  the  nineteenth.  A  contemporary  of  Irving, 
then,  he  reverses  the  relation  of  substance  to  style  which  we 
remarked  in  Irving's  prose.  Irving,  imbued  with  nineteenth- 
century  romantic  temper,  wrote  in  the  classical  style  of  the 
century  before;  Bryant,  writing  in  the  simply  luminous  style 
of  his  own  century,  expressed  a  somewhat  formal  sentimen 
tality  which  had  hardly  characterised  vital  work  in  England 
for  fifty  years. 

Always  simple  and  always  luminous,  then,  tenderly  senti 
mental,  melancholy  and  sweet,  given  to  commonplace  didactic 
moralising  and  coolly  careful  metre  and  rhyme,  Bryant,  a  far 
from  prolific  poet,  had  done,  when  he  came  to  New  York  at 
the  age  of  thirty-one,  as  good  work  as  he  was  ever  destined  to 
do.  In  New  York  he  lived  for  fifty-three  years ;  and  during 
those  years  most  of  what  is  now  called  American  literature 
came  into  existence.  His  life,  indeed,  is  really  coeval  with 
the  letters  of  his  country.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  chief 
development  of  these  letters  centred  in  Boston.  Had  Bryant 
yielded  to  his  first  impulse,  and  gone  not  to  New  York, 
but  to  the  chief  city  of  his  native  New  England,  the  chances 
are  that  his  eminence  would  have  suffered.  In  New  York, 
however,  throughout  his  residence  there,  it  became  clearer  and 
clearer  that  he  was  not  only  the  most  eminent  of  local  journ 
alists,  but  also  the  only  resident  poet  of  distinction.  That 
accidental  word  calls  to  mind  a  trait  which  any  one  who  ever 
saw  Bryant  must  remember.  Whatever  one  thought  of 
his  literary  merit,  —  and  the  great  changes  in  literary  fashion 
which  occurred  during  his  lifetime  often  made  his  younger 
contemporaries  deem  him  less  of  a  poet  than  calm  reflection 
makes  him  seem  now,  —  there  can  be  no  question  that  his 
aspect  was  remarkably  distinguished. 


202          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1198-1857 

Partly,  of  course,  this  was  a  matter  of  mere  personal  ap 
pearance.  His  firm  old  features,  encircled  by  a  cloud  of 
snowy  hair  and  beard,  would  have  impressed  anybody  ;  but 
in  the  distinction  of  Bryant's  appearance  there  was  some 
thing  more  than  accident  of  feature,  and  something  far  more 
significant  in  the  history  of  literary  America.  One  does  not 
remember  his  manner  as  in  the  least  assertive.  Rather  to 
those  who,  without  knowing  him,  saw  him  at  a  distance 
his  aspect  was  gentle,  kindly,  calmly  venerable.  But  it 
had  not  the  simplicity  of  unconsciousness.  Whatever  he 
really  felt,  he  looked  like  a  man  who  felt  himself  consider 
able;  and  certainly  the  qualities  for  which  he  most  valued 
himself  were  not  those  which  as  journalist  and  man  of  busi 
ness  had  made  him  a  man  of  fortune.  The  thing  for  which 
he  most  respected  himself  was  his  work  as  a  poet ;  and  be 
yond  question  it  was  his  work  as  a  poet  which  the  public 
most  willingly  recognised.  The  distinction  he  may  have  felt, 
—  the  distinction  which  he  certainly  received  from  his  con 
temporaries,  and  which  came  to  be  so  embodied  in  his  per 
sonal  appearance,  —  was  wholly  due  to  his  achievement  as  a 
man  of  letters. 

In  this  fact  there  is  something  characteristic  of  America  at 
the  time  when  Bryant's  best  work  was  done.  Ours  was  a 
new  country,  at  last  conscious  of  its  national  independence. 
It  was  deeply  and  sensitively  aware  that  it  lacked  a  literature. 
Whoever  produced  writings  which  could  be  pronounced 
admirable  was  accordingly  regarded  by  his  fellow-citizens  as 
a  public  benefactor,  a  great  public  figure,  a  personage  of 
whom  the  nation  should  be  proud.  Bryant,  fully  recognised 
in  early  middle  life,  retained  to  the  end  that  gracious  dis 
tinction  of  aspect  which  comes  from  the  habit  of  personal 
eminence. 

Such  was  the  eldest  of  our  nineteenth-century  poets,  the 
first  whose  work  was  recognised  abroad.  In  the  nature  of 
things  he  has  never  been  widely  popular;  and  in  the  course 


BRYANT  203 

of  a  century  whose  poetry  has  been  chiefly  marked  by 
romantic  passion,  he  has  tended  to  seem  more  and  more  com 
monplace.  But  those  of  us  who  used  to  think  him  common 
place  forgot  his  historical  significance ;  we  forgot  that  his  work 
was  really  the  first  which  proved  to  England  what  native 
American  poetry  might  be.  The  old  world  was  looking  for 
some  wild  manifestation  of  this  new,  hardly  apprehended, 
western  democracy.  Instead,  what  it  found  in  Bryant,  the  one 
poetic  contemporary  of  Irving  and  Cooper  whose  writings  have 
lasted,  was  fastidious  over-refinement,  tender  sentimentality, 
and  pervasive  luminosity.  Refinement,  in  short,  and  con 
scious  refinement,  groups  Bryant  with  Irving,  with  Cooper, 
and  with  Brockden  Brown.  In  its  beginning  the  American 
literature  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  marked  rather  by 
delicacy  than  by  strength,  by  palpable  consciousness  of  personal 
distinction  rather  than  by  any  such  outburst  of  previously 
unphrased  emotion  as  on  general  principles  democracy  might 
have  been  expected  to  excite. 


EDGAR    ALLAN    POE 

IN  April,  1846,  Edgar  Allan  Poe  published  in  "  Godey's 
Lady's  Book"  a  considerable  article  on  William  Cullen 
Bryant.  In  the  six  following  numbers  of  the  same  periodical, 
whose  colored  fashion-plates  are  said  to  have  been  highly 
acceptable  to  the  contemporary  female  public,  appeared  that 
series  of  comments  on  the  literary  personages  of  the  day 
which  has  been  collected  under  the  name  of  the  "  Literati." 
The  personal  career  of  Poe  was  so  erratic  that  one  can  hardly 
group  him  with  any  definite  literary  school.  It  seems,  how 
ever,  more  than  accidental  that  his  principal  critical  work 
concerned  the  contemporary  literature  of  New  York  ;  and 
though  he  was  born  in  Boston  and  passed  a  good  deal  of  his 
life  in  Virginia,  he  spent  in  New  York  rather  more  of  his  lit 
erary  years  than  anywhere  else.  On  the  whole,  then,  this 
seems  the  most  fitting  place  to  consider  him. 

Erratic  his  career  was  from  the  beginning.  His  father,  the 
son  of  a  Revolutionary  soldier,  had  gone  wrong  and  brought 
up  on  the  stage ;  his  mother  was  an  English  actress  of  whom 
little  is  known.  The  pair,  who  chanced  to  be  in  Boston 
when  their  son  was  born,  in  1809,  died  when  he  was  still 
a  little  child.  At  the  age  of  two,  he  was  adopted  by  a 
gentleman  of  Richmond,  Virginia,  named  Allan,  who  soon 
took  him  to  Europe,  where  he  remained  from  1815  to  1820. 
In  1826  he  was  for  a  year  at  the  University  of  Virginia, 
where  his  career  was  brought  to  an  end  by  a  gambling  scrape, 
which  in  turn  brought  almost  to  an  end  his  relations  with 
his  adopted  father.  In  1827  n^s  ^rst  verses  were  published, 


POE  205 

a  little  volume  entitled  "Tamerlane  and  Other  Poems." 
Then  he  drifted  into  the  army,  and  a  temporary  reconciliation 
with  Mr.  Allan  got  him  into  the  Military  Academy  at  West 
Point,  from  which  in  1831  he  managed  to  get  himself  dis 
missed.  After  that  he  always  lived  from  hand  to  mouth, 
supporting  himself  as  a  journalist  and  as  a  contributor  to 
numberless  periodicals  which  flourished  in  his  day  and  have 
long  since  disappeared.  The  unedifying  question  of  his  per 
sonal  habits  need  not  seriously  concern  us.  Beyond  doubt 
he  was  occasionally  drunk,  and  he  probably  took  more  or 
less  opium;  at  the  same  time  there  is  no  evidence  that  he 
was  abandoned  to  habitual  excesses.  His  u  Manuscript  found 
in  a  Bottle,"  published  in  1833,  procured  him  for  a  while 
the  editorship  of  the  "Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  published 
at  Richmond  and  for  many  years  the  most  successful  literary 
periodical  of  the  South.  In  1835  he  secretly  married  a 
charming  but  penniless  girl,  a  relative  of  his  own ;  he  married 
her  again  openly  in  1836.  In  1839  and  1840  he  edited  the 
"Gentleman's  Magazine"  in  Philadelphia;  from  1840  to 
1842  he  edited  "Graham's  Magazine"  in  New  York;  his 
general  career  was  that  of  a  literary  hack.  In  1847,  a^ter  a 
life  of  distressing  poverty,  his  wife  died ;  two  years  later  Poe 
himself  died  under  circumstances  which  have  never  been  quite 
clear.  He  had  certainly  alleviated  his  widowhood  by  various 
flirtations,  and  it  is  said  that  he  was  about  to  marry  again. 
The  story  goes  that  he  was  passing  through  Baltimore,  either 
on  his  way  to  see  his  betrothed  or  on  his  way  from  a  visit  to 
her.  In  that  city  an  election  was  about  to  take  place ;  and 
some  petty  politicians  in  search  of  "  repeaters "  picked  him 
up,  got  him  drunk,  and  made  him  vote  all  over  town.  Hav 
ing  thus  exhausted  his  political  usefulness,  they  left  him  in  the 
gutter  from  whence  he  found  his  way  to  the  hospital,  where 
he  certainly  died. 

Born  fifteen  years  later  than  Bryant  and  dead  twenty-nine 
years   earlier,    Poe,   now   fifty  years  in  his    grave,  seems  to 


206          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

belong  to  an  earlier  period  of  our  letters ;  but  really,  as  we 
have  seen,  Bryant's  principal  work  was  done  before  1832. 
At  that  time  Poe  had  published  only  three  volumes  of  verse  ; 
his  lasting  prose  came  somewhat  later;  in  fact,  the  permanent 
work  of  Poe  may  be  said  to  coincide  with  the  first  twelve 
years  of  the  Victorian  epoch.  In  1838,  the  year  of  "Arthur 
Gordon  Pym,"  Dickens  was  at  work  on  u  Oliver  Twist"  and 
"  Nicholas  Nickleby ;  "  and  Carlyle's  "  French  Revolution  " 
was  a  new  book.  In  1849,  when  Poe  died,  Thackeray's 
"Vanity  Fair"  and  the  first  two  volumes  of  Macaulay's 
"  History "  had  lately  appeared ;  Dickens  was  publishing 
"  David  Copperfield,"  and  Thackeray  "  Pendennis ; "  and 
Ruskin  brought  out  his  u  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture." 
Had  Poe  survived  to  Bryant's  years,  he  would  have  outlived 
not  only  Bryant  himself,  but  Emerson  and  Hawthorne  and 
Longfellow  and  Lowell,  and  indeed  almost  every  literary  con 
temporary  except  Holmes. 

The  very  mention  of  these  names  is  enough  to  call  to 
mind  a  distinction  between  the  career  of  Poe  and  that  of 
almost  every  other  American  whose  literary  reputation  has 
survived  from  the  days  when  he  was  writing.  The  men  on 
whom  we  have  already  touched  were  socially  of  the  better 
sort,  either  by  birth  or  by  achieved  position.  So  in  general 
were  the  chief  men  of  letters  who  made  the  Renaissance  of 
New  England  the  most  important  fact  in  American  literary 
history.  Poe,  on  the  other  hand,  was  always  a  waif  and  a  stray, 
essentially  a  Bohemian.  There  was  in  his  nature  something 
which  made  futile  the  effort  of  that  benevolent  Virginian  gentle 
man  to  adopt  him  into  the  gentler  social  classes  of  America. 
In  his  lifetime,  then,  Poe  must  have  seemed  personally  inferior 
to  most  of  his  eminent  contemporaries  in  American  letters.  Yet 
now  that  all  are  dead,  he  begins  to  seem  quite  as  important  as 
any.  In  1885  Mr.  William  Minto,  writing  of  him  in  the 
"  Encyclopedia  Britannica,"  called  him  "  the  most  interesting 
figure  in  American  literature."  Superlatives,  of  course,  are 


POJZ  207 

dangerous  ;  and  Poe's  writings  could  never  obtain  such  gen 
eral,  uncritical  popularity  as  Cooper's  ;  but,  to  turn  only  to  the 
bibliography  in  the  last  volume  of  Stedman  and  Woodberry's 
admirable  edition  of  Poe,  it  appears  that  between  1890  and 
1895  there  were  at  least  ten  translations  from  his  works  into 
various  foreign  languages,  among  others  Swedish,  something 
which  looks  like  Bohemian,  Italian,  Danish,  and  South  Ameri 
can  Spanish.  Certainly  among  the  literary  classes  of  Europe 
no  American  author  has  attracted  more  attention  than  Poe, 
whose  influence  still  seems  extending. 

Fifty  years  after  his  death,  then,  we  find  his  reputation 
familiar  throughout  the  civilised  world ;  and  such  a  reputation 
obscures  the  fact  that  in  life  the  man  who  has  won  it  was  of 
doubtful  repute.  The  accident  that  his  first  published  work 
bears  almost  the  same  name  as  that  of  the  first  tragedy  of 
Christopher  Marlowe  suggests  a  real  analogy.  Poe  and 
Marlowe  alike  were  men  of  extraordinary  power  and  of  reck 
less  personal  habit ;  alike  they  produced  work  which  will  al 
ways  enrich  the  literature  of  the  language  in  which  it  was 
written.  In  their  own  times,  however,  neither  was  an  admi 
rably  solitary  man  of  genius  ;  each  was  only  one  of  a  consider 
able  group  of  writers,  now  mostly  forgotten  but  undeniably 
more  presentable  than  the  artists  whom  time  has  proved 
greater.  Both,  after  troublesome,  irregular  careers,  died 
miserably  in  public  places  ;  it  is  only  as  each  has  receded  into 
tradition  that  his  earthly  immortality  has  become  assured. 

The  historical  position  of  Poe  in  American  letters  can 
be  seen  by  glancing  at  his  already  mentioned  papers,  the 
"  Literati."  These,  we  remember,  followed  in  "  Godey's 
Lady's  Book"  on  a  lengthy  criticism  of  Bryant.  It  is 
worth  while  to  name  the  thirty-eight  persons,  then  mostly 
living  in  New  York  and  certainly  contributing  to  the  New 
York  periodicals  of  the  moment,  whom  Poe  thought  consid 
erable  and  interesting  enough  for  notice.  Here  is  the  list : 
George  Bush,  George  H.  Colton,  N.  P.  Willis,  William  M. 


208          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

Gillespie,  Charles  F.  Briggs,  William  Kirkland,  John  W. 
Francis,  Anna  Cora  Mowatt,  George  B.  Cheever,  Charles 
Anthon,  Ralph  Hoyt,  Gulian  C.  Verplanck,  Freeman  Hunt, 
Piero  Maroncelli,  Laughton  Osborn,  Fitz-Greene  Halleck, 
Ann  S.  Stephens,  Evert  A.  Duyckinck,  Mary  Gove,  James 
Aldrich,  Thomas  Dunn  Brown,  Henry  Cary,  Christopher 
Pearse  Cranch,  Sarah  Margaret  Fuller,  James  Lawson,  Caro 
line  M.  Kirkland,  Prosper  M.  Wetmore,  Emma  C.  Embury, 
Epes  Sargent,  Frances  Sargent  Osgood,  Lydia  M.  Child,  Eliza 
beth  Bogart,  Catherine  M.  Sedgwick,  Lewis  Gaylord  Clark, 
Anne  C.  Lynch,  Charles  Fenno  Hoffman,  Mary  E.  Hewitt, 
and  Richard  Adams  Locke.  In  this  list  there  is  one  name 
which  we  have  already  found  worthy  of  a  glance,  —  that  of 
Fitz-Greene  Halleck.  There  is  another  which  we  have  men 
tioned, —  that  of  Evert  A.  Duyckinck.  There  are  two  at 
which  we  shall  certainly  glance  later,  —  those  of  N.  P.  Willis  i 
and  Sarah  Margaret  Fuller.  And  there  are  two  or  three  I 
which  we  may  conceivably  mention,  —  those  of  Mrs.  Child,-* 
of  Miss  Sedgwick,  of  Lewis  Gaylord  Clark,  and  of  Charles 
Fenno  Hoffman.  The  very  names  of  the  other  "  Literati  "  are  4 
mostly  forgotten :  they  lived ;  they  flourished  ;  they  died ; 
and  they  are  so  thoroughly  buried,  some  in  the  pages  of 
Griswold  or  of  Duyckinck,  that  even  such  generous  editors 
as  Stedman  and  Hutchinson  have  found  no  room  for  mention 
of  a  full  sixteen  of  the  thirty-eight.  It  seems  almost  cruel  to 
disturb  the  peace  of  such  untroubled,  untroublesome  dead. 

Our  chief  reason  for  recalling  these  forgotten  people 
is  not  to  remind  ourselves  of  what  they  happened  to  be  pub 
lishing  when  Poe's  best  work  was  done  ;  it  is  rather  to  point 
out  why  a  considerable  part  of  Poe's  best  work  has  itself  been 
forgotten.  His  critical  writings,  collected  in  the  sixth,  seventh, 
and  eighth  volumes  of  Stedman  and  Woodberry's  edition  of 
his  works,  are  the  only  ones  in  which  he  shows  how  he  could 
deal  with  actual  fact ;  and  in  dealing  with  actual  fact  he  proved 
himself  able.  Though  some  of  the  facts  he  dealt  with,  how- 


POE  209 

ever,  were  worthy  of  his  pen,  —  he  was  among  the  first,  for 
example,  to  recognise  the  merit  of  Tennyson  and  of  Mrs.  \ 
Browning,  —  most  of  them  in  the  course  of  fifty  years  have 
proved  of  no  human  importance.  For  all  this,  they  existed  at 
the  moment.  Poe  was  a  journalist,  who  had  to  write  about 
what  was  in  the  air ;  and  he  wrote  about  it  so  well  that  in 
certain  aspects  this  critical  work  seems  his  best.  He  dab 
bled  a  little  in  philosophy,  of  course,  particularly  on  the 
aesthetic  side  ;  but  he  had  neither  the  seriousness  of  nature  — 
spiritual  insight,  one  might  call  it,  —  which  must  underlie 
serious  philosophising,  nor  yet  the  scholarly  training  which 
must  precede  lasting,  solid  thought.  What  he  did  possess 
to  a-  rare  degree  was  the  temper  of  an  enthusiastic  artist,  who 
genuinely  enjoyed  and  welcomed  whatever  in  his  own  art, 
of  poetry,  he  found  meritorious.  No  doubt  he  was  more 
than  willing  to  condemn  faults ;  whoever  remembers  any  of 
his  critical  activity,  for  example,  will  remember  how  vigour- 
ously  he  attacked  Longfellow  for  plagiarism.  We  ought  to 
recall  with  equal  certainty  how  willingly  Poe  recognised  in 
this  same  Longfellow  those  traits  which  he  believed  excel 
lent.  Poe's  serious  writing  does  not  concern  the  eternities 
as  did  the  elder  range  of  American  literature,  nor  yet  does  it 
touch  on  public  matters.  True  or  not,  indeed,  that  grotesque 
story  of  his  death  typifies  his  relation  to  political  affairs. 
His  critical  writing,  all  the  same,  deals  with  questions  of 
fine  art  in  a  spirit  which  if  sometimes  narrow,  often  dogmatic, 
and  never  scholarly,  is  sincere,  fearless,  and  generally  eager 
in  its  impulsive  recognition  of  merit. 

Take,  for  example,  a  stray  passage  from  the  "  Literati,"  — 
his  enthusiastic  criticism  of  Mrs.  Frances  Sargent  Osgood,  a 
lady  whose  work  never  fulfilled  the  promise  which  Poe  dis 
cerned  in  it  :  — 

"Whatever  be  her  theme,  she  at  once  extorts  from  it  its  whole 
essentiality  of  grace.  Fanny  Ellsler  has  been  often  lauded :  true 
poets  have  sung  her  praises ;  but  we  look  in  vain  for  anything  written 

14 


210          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

about  her,  which  so  distinctly  and  vividly  paints  her  to  the  eye  as  the 
.  .  .  quatrains  which  follow  :  — 

" '  She  comes  —  the  spirit  of  the  dance  ! 

And  but  for  those  large  eloquent  eyes, 
Where  passion  speaks  in  every  glance, 
She  'd  seem  a  wanderer  from  the  skies. 

" '  So  light  that,  gazing  breathless  there  / 

Lest  the  celestial  dream  should  got 
You  ''d  think  the  music  in  the  air 
Waved  the  fair  vision  to  and  fro  ; 

' '  Or  that  the  melody 's  sweet  flow 

Within  the  radiant  creature  played, 
And  those  soft  wreathing  arms  of  snow 
And  white  sylph  feet  the  music 


"  This  is  indeed  poetry  —  and  of  the  most  unquestionable  kind  — 
poetry  truthful  in  the  proper  sense — that  is  to  say,  breathing  of 
Nature.  There  is  here  nothing  forced  or  artificial  —  no  hardly  sus 
tained  enthusiasm.  The  poetess  speaks  because  she  feels,  and  what 
she  feels  ;  but  then  what  she  feels  is  felt  only  by  the  truly  poetical." 

This  passage  deserves  our  attention  both  as  containing  an 
.unusually  good  fragment  of  the  long-forgotten  poetry  produced 
in  New  York  sixty  years  ago,  and  as  indicating  the  temper  in 
which  Poe  approached  contemporary  literature.  To  his  mind 
the  only  business  of  a  poet  was  to  make  things  of  beauty*-*-"""^ 
If  in  what  professed  to  be  poetry  he  found  ugly  things,  he 
unhesitatingly  condemned  them  ;  if  he  found  anything  which 
seemed  beautiful,  nobody  could  welcome  it  more  eagerly.  His 
enthusiasm,  indeed,  often  led  him  into  superlative  excess ;  in 
the  case  of  these  pleasantly  pretty  lines  of  Mrs.  Osgood's,  it 
certainly  did  so  ;  but  if  we  neglect  the  superlatives,  we  can 
admit  that  what  he  felt  to  be  beautiful  was  at  least  good,  just 
as  what  he  condemned  was  almost  always  abominable.  How 
ever  meretricious,  —  and  surely  there  are  aspects  enough  in 
which  he  seems  very  meretricious  indeed, —  Poe  really  loved 
his  art ;  and  whatever  his  lack  of  training,  he  had  a  natural,  — - 
instinctive,  eager  perception  of  beauty.  This,  too,  he  set 
1  The  italics  are  Poe's. 


POE 

forth  in  a  style  always  simple  and  clear,  always  free  from' 
affectation  or  mannerism,  and  always  marked  by  a  fine  sense 
of  rhythm.  All  these  merits  appear  saliently  in  those  portions 
of  his  work  which  deal  with  actual  fact. 

When  it  comes  to  his  philosophical  writings,  the  whole 
thing  seems  more  suspicious.  As  everybody  remembers, 
one  of  Poe's  feats  as  a  journalist  was  to  publish  a  successful 
hoax  concerning  the  passage  of  the  Atlantic  by  a  balloon,  in 
which,  along  with  other  persons,  the  minor  novelist,  Harrison 
Ainsworth,  was  said  to  have  journeyed  from  England  to  the 
Carolinas.  The  tendency  to  humbug  typified  by  this  harmless 
journalistic  feat  was  deeply  characteristic  of  Poe.  When  you 
read  such  papers  as  his  "  Poetic  Principles,"  his  "  Rationale  of 
Verse,"  or  his  "  Philosophy  of  Composition,"  it  is  hard  to  feel 
sure  that  he  is  not  gravely  hoaxing  you.  On  the  whole,  he 
probably  was  not.  In  his  work  of  this  kind  one  feels  intense 
ingenuity  and  unlimited  scholarly  ignorance.  One  feels,  too, 
more  and  more  constantly,  that  his  temper  was  far  from  judi 
cial.  The  man  who  would  set  forth  a  lastingly  serious  study 
of  poetry  must  do  so  with  deliberation,  weighing  all  ques 
tions  which  present  themselves,  and  arriving  at  conclusions 
slowly  and  firmly.  It  is  one  thing  to  delight  in  what  is 
good ;  it  is  quite  another  critically  to  understand  the  reasons 
for  such  pleasure.  The  former  power  is  a  matter  of  tempera 
ment ;  the  latter  is  rather  one  of  thoughtful  scholarly  training. 
The  traits  which  make  Poe's  occasional  criticisms  excellent 
are  only  swiftness  of  perception  and  fineness  of  taste  ;  these 
are  matters  not  of  training  but  of  temperament. 

Temperament,  indeed,  of  a  markedly  individual  kind  is 
what  gives  lasting  character  and  vitality  to  the  tales  and  the 
poems  by  which  he  has  become  permanently  known.  Both 
alike  are  instantly  to  be  distinguished  from  the  critical  work  at 
which  we  have  glanced  by  the  fact  that  they  never  deal  with 
actualities,  be  those  actualities  of  this  world  or  of  the  next. 
Poe's  individual  and  powerful  style,  to  be  sure,  full  of  what 


212          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

seems  like  vividness,  constantly  produces  "  that  willing  sus 
pension  of  disbelief  for  the  moment  which  constitutes  poetic 
faith ;  "  but  one  has  only  to  glance  at  the  attempts  to  illustrate 
his  work  in  the  excellent  edition  of  Stedman  and  Woodberry 
to  feel  the  full  resurgent  rush  of  suspended  disbelief. 

Take,  for  example,  a  passage  which  has  been  chosen  for 
illustration  in  "  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher  "  :  — 

"  As  if  in  the  superhuman  energy  of  his  utterance  there  had  been 
found  the  potency  of  a  spell,  the  huge  antique  panels  to  which  the 
speaker  pointed  threw  slowly  back,  upon  the  instant,  their  ponderous 
and  ebony  jaws.  It  was  the  work  of  the  rushing  gust  —  but  then 
without  those  doors  there  did  stand  the  lofty  and  enshrouded  figure 
of  the  lady  Madeline  of  Usher.  There  was  blood  upon  her  white 
robes,  and  the  evidence  of  some  bitter  struggle  upon  every  portion  of 
her  emaciated  frame.  For  a  moment  she  remained  trembling  and 
reeling  to  and  fro  upon  the  threshold  —  then,  with  a  low  moaning  cry, 
fell  heavily  inward  upon  the  person  of  her  brother,  and,  in  her  violent 
and  now  final  death-agonies,  bore  him  to  the  floor  a  corpse,  and  a 
victim  to  the  terrors  he  had  anticipated." 

Compare  with  this  the  grotesque  picture  at  the  beginning  of 
the  tale  in  Stedman  and  Woodberry's  volume.  The  trouble 
is  not  chiefly  that  the  draughtsman,  however  skilful,  has  not 
been  gifted  with  genius,  nor  yet  that  he  has  so  far  departed 
from  the  text  as  to  depict  a  man  who  has  just  sprung 
w  furiously  to  his  feet "  pensively  seated  in  a  very  uncom 
fortable  armchair;  it  is  rather  that  fictions  even  so  vivid  as 
Usher  and  the  Lady  Madeline  and  the  unearthly  house  of 
their  doom  are  things  which  no  one  can  translate  into  visual 
terms  without  demonstrating  their  unreality. 

It  is  just  so  with  Poe's  most  familiar  poems.  "  The  Raven  " 
cannot  be  credibly  visualised,  any  more  than  the  uninspired 
draughtsman  who  tried  to  compose  a  frontispiece  for  the  poem 
could  make  the  lost  Lenore  anything  but  ridiculous.  The  pic 
ture  which  illustrates  "Annabel  Lee,"  in  its  attempt  at  real 
ism,  brings  out  the  trait  more  clearly  still.  And  take  the 
opening  stanzas  of  "  Ulalume  " :  — 


POE  213 

"The  skies  they  were  ashen  and  sober; 

The  leaves  they  were  crisped  and  sere, 

The  leaves  they  were  withering  and  sere ; 
It  was  night  in  the  lonesome  October 

Of  my  most  immemorial  year  ; 
It  was  hard  by  the  dim  lake  of  Auber, 

In  the  misty  mid  region  of  Weir  : 
It  was  down  by  the  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 

In  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 

"  Here  once,  through  an  alley  Titanic 

Of  cypress,  I  roamed  with  my  soul  — 

Of  cypress,  with  Psyche,  my  Soul. 
These  were  days  when  my  heart  was  volcanic 

As  the  scoriae  rivers  that  roll, 

As  the  lavas  that  restlessly  roll 
Their  sulphurous  currents  down  Yaanek 

In  the  ultimate  climes  of  the  pole, 
That  groan  as  they  roll  down  Mount  Yaanek 

In  the  realms  of  the  boreal  pole." 

You  can  hardly  read  this  over  without  becoming  conscious 
of  two  facts :  for  all  the  vividness  of  impression  there  is  no 
actuality  about  these  images;  and  yet  there  hovers  around 
them  a  mood,  a  temper,  an  impalpable  but  unmistakable  quality, 
which  could  never  have  emanated  from  any  other  human 
being  than  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

This  individuality  of  his  is  hard  to  define.  One  or  two 
things  about  it,  however,  seem  clear.  In  tales  and  poems 
alike  he  is  most  characteristic  when  dealing  with  mysteries ; 
and  though  to  a  certain  point  these  mysteries,  often  horrible, 
are  genuinely  mysterious,  they  reveal  no  trace  of  spiritual 
insight.  They  indicate  a  sense  that  human  perception  is 
inexorably  limited,  but  no  vital  perception  of  the  eternities 
which  lie  beyond  it.  Excellent  in  their  way,  one  cannot  but 
feel  their  way  to  be  melodramatic.  The  very  word  "  melo 
dramatic"  recalls  to  us  the  strolling  stage  from  which  Poe 
almost  accidentally  sprung  in  that  Boston  lodging-house  ninety 
years  ago.  From  beginning  to  end  his  temper  had  the  inex 
tricable  combination  of  meretriciousness  and  sincerity  which 


214         THE  MIDDLE   STATES,   1798-1857 

marks  the  temperament  of  typical  actors.  Theirs  is  a  strange 
trade,  wherein  he  does  best  who  best  shams.  At  its  noblest 
the  stage  rises  into  tragedy  or  broadens  into  comedy  ;  but 
in  our  century  it  has  probably  appealed  most  generally  to 
the  public  when  it  has  assumed  its  less  poetical  and  more 
characteristic  form  of  melodrama.  Poe,  at  least  tempera 
mentally,  seems  to  have  been  a  melodramatic  creature  of 
genius. 

For  genius  he  certainly  had,  and  to  no  small  degree  in  that 
excellent  form  which  has  been  described  as  "  an  infinite 
capacity  for  taking  pains."  In  his  tales,  now  of  melodramatic 
mystery,  again  of  elaborate  ingenuity,  one  feels  not  only  that 
constant  power  of  imagination  peculiar  to  him  ;  one  feels  also 
masterly  precision  of  touch.  Take,  for  example,  a  familiar 
passage  from  "  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher  "  :  — 

**  I  have  just  spoken  of  that  morbid  condition  of  the  auditory  nerve 
which  rendered  all  music  intolerable  to  the  sufferer,  with  the  excep 
tion  of  certain  effects  of  stringed  instruments.  It  was,  perhaps,  the 
narrow  limits  to  which  he  thus  confined  himself  upon  the  guitar, 
which  gave  birth,  in  great  measure,  to  the  fantastic  character  of  his 
performances.  But  the  fervid/<2«7//y  of  his  impromptus  could  not  be 
so  accounted  for.  They  must  have  been,  and  were,  in  the  notes,  as 
well  as  in  the  words  of  his  wild  fantasias  (for  he  not  infrequently 
accompanied  himself  with  rhymed  verbal  improvisations),  the  result 
of  that  intense  mental  collectedness  and  concentration  to  which  I 
have  previously  alluded  as  observable  only  in  particular  moments  of 
the  highest  artificial  excitement.  The  words  of  one  of  these  rhap 
sodies  I  have  easily  remembered.  I  was,  perhaps,  the  more  forcibly 
impressed  with  it,  as  he  gave  it,  because,  in  the  under  or  mystic  cur- 
rent  of  its  meaning,  I  fancied  that  I  perceived,  and  for  the  first  time, 
a  full  consciousness,  on  the  part  of  Usher,  of  the  tottering  of  his  lofty 
reason  upon  her  throne.  The  verses,  which  were  entitled  'The 
Haunted  Palace,'  ran  very  nearly,  if  not  accurately,  thus :  — 

I 

"  In  the  greenest  of  our  valleys 

By  good  angels  tenanted, 
Once  a  fair  and  stately  palace  — 
Radiant  palace  —  reared  its  head. 


POE 

In  the  monarch  Thought's  dominion, 

It  stood  there ; 
Never  seraph  spread  a  pinion 

Over  fabric  half  so  fair. 

II 

"  Banners  yellow,  glorious,  golden, 

On  its  roof  did  float  and  flow, 
(This  —  all  this  —  was  in  the  olden 

Time  long  ago) 
And  every  gentle  air  that  dallied, 

In  that  sweet  day, 
Along  the  ramparts  plumed  and  pallid, 

A  winged  odor  went  away. 

Ill 

"Wanderers  in  that  happy  valley 

Through  two  luminous,  windows  saw 
Spirits  moving  musically 

To  a  lute's  well-tuned  law, 
Round  about  a  throne  where,  sitting, 

Porphyrogene, 
In  state  his  glory  well  befitting, 

The  ruler  of  the  realm  was  seen. 

IV 

"  And  all  with  pearl  and  ruby  glowing 

Was  the  fair  palace  door, 
Through  which  came  flowing,  flowing,  flowing, 

And  sparkling  evermore, 
A  troop  of  Echoes  whose  sweet  duty 

Was  but  to  sing, 
In  voices  of  surpassing  beauty, 

The  wit  and  wisdom  of  their  king. 

V 

u  But  evil  things,  in  robes  of  sorrow, 

Assailed  the  monarch's  high  estate  ; 
(Ah,  let  us  mourn,  for  never  morrow 
Shall  dawn  upon  him  desolate  !) 
And  round  about  his  home  the  glory 

That  blushed  and  bloomed 

Is  but  a  dim-remembered  story 

Of  the  old  time  entombed. 


216          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

VI 

"And  travellers  now  within  that  valley 

Through  the  red-litten  windows  see 
Vast  forms  that  move  fantastically 

To  a  discordant  melody; 
While,  like  a  ghastly  rapid  river, 

Through  the  pale  door 
A  hideous  throng  rush  out  forever, 

And  laugh  —  but  smile  no  more." 

Here  we  chance  to  have  side  by  side  his  prose  and  his  verse. 
It  is  hardly  excessive  to  say  that  as  you  read  both  over  and 
over  again,  particularly  if  you  read  aloud,  you  will  feel  more 
and  more  that  almost  every  vowel,  every  consonant,  and  more 
surely  still  every  turn  of  rhythm  which  places  the  accent  so 
definitely  where  the  writer  means  it  to  fall,  indicates  not  only 
a  rare  sense  of  form,  but  unusual  technical  mastery. 

They  indicate  more  than  this,  too.  Whether  the  things 
which  Poe  wished  to  express  were  worth  his  pains  is  not 
the  question.  He  knew  what  they  were,  and  he  unfeignedly 
wished  to  express  them.  He  had  almost  in  perfection  a  power 
more  frequently  shown  by  skilful  melodramatic  actors  than  by 
men  of  letters,  —  the  power  of  assuming  an  intensely  unreal 
mood  and  of  so  setting  it  forth  as  to  make  us  for  the  moment 
v  share  it  unresistingly.  This  power  one  feels  perhaps  most 
palpably  in  the  peculiar  melody  of  his  verse.  That  "  Haunted 
Palace  "  may  be  stagey  as  you  like ;  but  there  is  something  in 
its  lyric  quality  —  that  quality  whereby  poetry  impalpably  but 
unmistakably  performs  the  office  best  performed  by  pure 
music  —  which  throws  a  reader  into  a  mood  almost  too  subtle 
for  words.  A  morbid  mood,  to  be  sure,  this  of  Poe's,  and 
perhaps  a  meretricious ;  plenty  of  things  may  be  said  against 
it ;  but  the  mood  is  distinct  from  any  other  into  which 
literature  has  taken  us. 

A  little  while  ago  we  reminded  ourselves  of  a  certain 
analogy  between  Poe's  career  and  that  of  Marlowe,  the 
Elizabethan  tragic  dramatist,  who  came  to  his  end  just  as 


POE  217 

Shakspere's  serious  work  was  beginning.  Between  Poe's 
work  and  Marlowe's  there  is  another  analogy  which  has  his 
torically  proved  more  characteristic  of  literature  in  America 
than  in  England.  Marlowe's  life,  like  Poe's,  was  ugly,  sinful, 
and  sordid ;  yet  hardly  a  line  of  Marlowe's  tragedies  is  morally 
corrupt.  For  this,  indeed,  there  was  good  reason.  Marlowe 
chanced  to  belong  to  the  period  when  English  literature  was 
first  springing  into  conscious  life,  with  all  the  force  of  un 
hampered  imaginative  vitality.  In  literature,  as  in  human  exX 
istence,  a  chief  grace  of  normal  youth  is  freedom  from  such  | 
baseness  as  time  must  make  familiar  to  maturity.  In  the  case  / 
of  Poe  a  similar  contrast  between  life  and  work  appears/ 
Here,  however,  this  normal  reason  for  it  did  not  exist.  The 
very  fact  that  Poe's  work  has  been  eagerly  welcomed  by  con 
tinental  Europe  is  evidence  enough,  if  one  needed  evidence, 
that  his  temper  was  such  as  the  cant  of  the  present  day  calls 
decadent.  Now  the  decadent  literature  which  has  prevailed 
in  recent  England,  and  far  more  that  which  has  prevailed 
elsewhere  in  Europe,  is  pruriently  foul,  obscenely  alive  with 
nameless  figures  and  incidents,  and  with  germ-like  suggestions 
of  such  decay  as  must  permeate  a  civilisation  past  its  prime. 
In  Poe's  work,  on  the  other  hand,  for  all  the  decadent  quality 
of  his  temper,  there  is  a  singular  cleanness,  something  which 
for  all  the  thousand  errors  of  his  personal  life  seems  like  the 
instinctive  purity  of  a  child.  He  is  not  only  free  from  any 
taint  of  indecency ;  he  seems  remote  from  fleshliness  of 
mental  habit. 

In  the  strenuousness  of  his  artistic  conscience  we  found  a 
trait  more  characteristic  of  America  than  of  England,  —  a  trait 
which  is  perhaps  involved  in  the  national  self-consciousness 
of  our  country.  In  this  instinctive  freedom  from  lubricity, 
so  strongly  in  contrast  with  the  circumstances  of  his  personal 
career,  and  yet  to  all  appearances  so  unaffected,  one  feels  a 
touch  still  more  characteristic  of  his  America.  It  is  allied, 
perhaps,  with  that  freedom  from  actuality  which  we  have 


218          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

seen  to  characterise  his  most  apparently  vivid  work.  The 
world  which  bred  Poe  was  still  a  world  to  whose  national  life 
we  may  give  the  name  of  inexperience. 

Intensely  individual,  then,  and  paradoxically  sincere  in  all 
his  histrionic  malady  of  temper,  Poe  set  forth  a  peculiar  range 
of  mysterious  though  not  significant  emotion.  In  the  fact 
that  this  emotion,  even  though  insignificant,  was  mysterious,  is 
a  trait  which  we  begin  to  recognise  as  characteristically 
American,  at  least  at  that  moment  when  American  life  meant 
something  else  than  profound  human  experience.  There  is 
something  characteristically  American,  too,  in  the  fact  that 
Poe's  work  gains  its  effect  from  artistic  conscience,  an  ever 
present  sense  of  form.  Finally,  there  is  something  char 
acteristically  American  in  Poe's  freedom  from  either  conven 
tional  or  real  fleshly  taint.  Though  Poe's  power  was  great, 
however,  his  chief  merits  prove  merits  of  refinement.  Even 
through  a  time  so  recent  as  his,  refinement  of  temper,  con 
scientious  sense  of  form,  and  instinctive  neglect  of  actual 
fact  remained  the  most  characteristic  traits,  if  nof  of  Ameri 
can  life,  at  least  of  American  letters. 


VI 

THE    KNICKERBOCKER    SCHOOL 

IN  the  course  of  our  glances  at  Poe  we  had  occasion  to  recog 
nise  the  existence  of  an  extensive,  though  now  forgotten, 
periodical  literature,  —  "  Godey's  Lady's  Books,"  "  Southern 
Literary  Messengers,"  "  Graham's  Magazines,"  and  the 
like,  —  which  carried  on  the  impulse  toward  periodical  publi 
cation  already  evident  in  the  time  of  Brockden  Brown. 
Throughout  the  older  regions  of  America  such  things  sprung 
up,  flourished  for  a  little  while,  and  withered,  in  weed-like 
profusion.  A  year  or  two  ago,  Dr.  W.  B.  Cairns,  of  the  Uni 
versity  of  Wisconsin,  published  an  admirable  pamphlet,  "  On 
the  Development  of  American  Literature  from  1815  to  1833," 
in  which  this  ephemeral  phase  of  it  is  thoroughly  set  forth. 
So  far  as  the  periodicals  were  literary,  they  were  intensely 
conventional  and  sentimental,  often  in  the  manner  of  which 
Mrs.  Rowson's  once  popular  novel,  "  Charlotte  Temple," 
may  be  taken  as  a  comically  extravagant  example.  In  brief, 
as  Dr.  Cairns  displays  them,  they  are  another  proof,  if  proof 
were  needed,  of  what  inevitable  luxuriance  of  insignificant 
waste  must  accompany  any  period  of  artistic  achievement, 
even  when  the  achievement  itself  is  so  far  from  amazing  as 
was  that  of  America  during  the  years  now  in  question. 

In  1833,  the  year  when  Dr.  Cairns  brings  his  study  to  a 
close,  there  was  founded  in  New  York  the  magazine  in 
which  this  phase  of  literary  activity  may  be  said  to  have  cul 
minated.  This  "  Knickerbocker  Magazine,"  then,  deserves 
more  attention  than  its  positive  merit  would  warrant.  It  was 
founded  the  year  after  Bryant  brought  out  the  first  consider- 


220          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

able  collection  of  his  poems,  —  that  1832  which  was  marked 
in  English  history  by  the  Reform  Bill  and  in  English  litera 
ture  by  the  death  of  Scott.  The  chief  founder  of  the 
u  Knickerbocker  Magazine "  is  said  to  have  been  Charles 
Fenno  Hoffman,  a  gentleman  of  New  York  whom  Poe 
recorded  among  the  Literati  of  1846,  who  published  a  num 
ber  of  novels  and  poems,  and  whose  career  sadly  closed  with 
an  insanity  which,  beginning  in  1849,  kept  him  for  a  full 
thirty-five  years  in  the  seclusion  where  he  died.  During  its 
thirty  years  or  so  of  existence  the  u  Knickerbocker  Magazine  " 
became  not  only  the  most  conspicuous,  but  also  the  oldest 
periodical  of  its  class  in  the  United  States.  Though  Poe's 
Literati  were  not  all  contributors  to  it,  their  names  fairly 
typify  the  general  character  of  its  staff*,  toward  the  end  of 
the  40*5. 

In  1854  its  editor  was  a  gentleman  named  Lewis  Gaylord 
Clark,  whose  actual  contributions  to  literature  were  not  im 
portant  enough  to  have  been  found  worthy  of  a  place  in  Sted- 
man  and  Hutchinson's  generously  comprehensive  "Library." 
He  had  a  slightly  more  eminent  twin-brother,  Willis  Gaylord 
Clark,  who  died  young ;  Stedman  and  Hutchinson  print  one 
of  the  latter's  poems,  "  A  Witch  Song,"  of  which  masterpiece 
of  the  Clark  genius  the  following  stanza  may  give  an  adequate 
notion :  — 

"  Our  boat  is  strong,  its  oars  are  good, 

Of  charnel  bones  its  ribs  are  made ; 
From  coffins  old  we  carved  the  wood 

Beneath  the  gloomy  cypress  shade ; 
An  ignis-fatuus  lights  the  prow,  — 

It  is  a  felon's  blood-shot  e'e, 
And  it  shineth  forth  from  his  skeleton  brow 

To  light  our  way  o'er  the  Hexen  Zee." 

As  the  twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  the  founding  of  the 
magazine  was  approaching,  somebody  proposed  that  u  the 
surviving  writers  for  the  c  Knickerbocker '  should  each  furn 
ish,  gratuitously,  an  article,  and  that  the  collection  should  be 


THE  KNICKERBOCKER  SCHOOL         221 

published  in  a  volume  of  tasteful  elegance,  of  which  the  en 
tire  proceeds  should  be  devoted  to  the  building,  on  the  margin 
of  the  Hudson,  of  a  cottage,  suitable  for  the  home  of  a  man 
of  letters,  who,  like  Mr.  Clark,  is  also  a  lover  of  rural  life." 
The  book,  which  is  entitled  the  "  Knickerbocker  Gallery," 
was  published  early  in  1855. 

In  general  aspect  it  is  a  rather  comical  relic  of  obsolete 
taste.  It  is  a  fat  volume  of  about  five  hundred  gilt-edged 
pages,  bound  in  some  imitation  of  morocco,  heavily  overlaid 
with  gilt  roses  and  conventional  designs.  In  the  middle  of 
the  cover  is  a  rough  image  of  the  proposed  Knickerbocker 
cottage,  a  pseudo-Gothic  structure  with  a  regular  American 
piazza,  almost  heraldically  supported  on  either  side  by  a  small 
tree,  one  apparently  a  pine,  the  other  perhaps  a  maple,  and 
neither  quite  reaching  to  the  second-story  windows.  The  in 
terior  of  the  book  corresponds  with  its  inviting  external  aspect. 
There  are  fifty-five  contributions  by  fifty-four  separate  men  of 
letters.  For  some  reason  which  does  not  appear,  no  women 
seem  to  have  been  invited  to  co-operate  in  the  benevolent 
scheme.  In  general,  the  contributions  are  such  as  pervaded 
the  sentimental  annuals  and  gift-books  which  during  the  second 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  delighted  the  reading  public 
in  England  and  in  America  alike.  Forty-seven  of  the  articles 
are  enriched  by  portraits  of  the  writers  engraved  on  steel.  The 
most  characteristic  of  these  is  perhaps  a  gently  smirking  vignette 
of  Bryant,  whose  chin  beard,  shaven  upper  lip,  and  poetically 
bald  forehead,  dividing  unkempt  locks,  emerge  from  the  broad 
velvet  collar  of  a  much  befrogged  dressing-gown.  Among 
the  faces  thus  immortalised  was  that  of  Irving,  whose  portrait 
is  taken  not  from  a  daguerreotype,  but  from  a  togaed  bust  by 
Ball  Hughes.  He  contributed  some  notes  from  a  common 
place  book  of  the  year  1821.  Bryant  sent  some  verses  on 
"  A  Snow  Shower ; "  and  Halleck  a  poetical  u  Epistle  to 
Clark."  There  are  also  contributions  from  several  duly 
portrayed  literary  men  of  New  England :  Holmes  sent  a 


222          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

four-page  poem  entitled  "  A  Vision  of  the  Housatonic ; " 
Fields  sent  an  "  Invitation  to  our  Cottage  Home,"  in  six 
teen  lines  of  innocent  blank  verse;  Longfellow  contrib 
uted  a  poem,  "  On  the  Emperor's  Bird's  Nest ;  "  and  Lowell, 
whose  portrait  does  not  appear,  sent  his  verse  on  "  Massac- 
cio's  Paintings  in  the  Brancacci  Chapel  "  at  Florence.  The 
other  contributors  were  mostly  either  resident  in  New  York 
or  closely  associated  with  that  city.  At  least  three,  Mr.  Don 
ald  Grant  Mitchell,  Mr.  Charles  Godfrey  Leland,  and  Mr. 
Richard  Henry  Stoddard,  are  still  surviving  and  writing  in 
the  year  1900.  The  remainder  may  be  taken  as  fairly  typical 
of  that  phase  in  the  letters  of  New  York  which  has  sometimes 
been  called  the  Knickerbocker  School.  Some  of  their  names 
have  survived  ;  those,  for  example,  of  George  Henry  Boker, 
of  Bayard  Taylor,  of  John  G.  Saxe,  of  Henry  Theodore 
Tuckerman,  of  George  William  Curtis,  and  —  an  unex 
pected  person  to  find  in  such  company  —  of  William  H. 
Seward.  Many  of  their  names  are  completely  forgotten  ; 
those,  for  example,  of  W  illiam  Pitt  Palmer,  John  W.  Francis, 
Thomas  Ward,  J.  L.  McConnell,  Alfred  B.  Street,  and  more. 
Of  all  the  names  and  faces  in  the  book,  the  most  characteristic 
of  the  literary  period  which  produced  it  in  New  York  are 
those  of  Nathaniel  Parker  Willis. 

In  the  Riverside  edition  of  Lowell's  "  Fable  for  Critics," 
a  poem  originally  published  seven  years  before  the  "  Knicker 
bocker  Gallery,"  when  Willis  was  at  the  height  of  his  popu 
larity,  there  are  two  full  pages  of  tripping  verses  which 
characterise  Willis  admirably.  And  in  the  paper  entitled 
"The  New  Portfolio,"  with  which  in  1885  Dr.  Holmes 
opened  his  "Mortal  Antipathy,"  is  a  less  familiar  passage 
about  Willis,  worth  reading  in  full :  — 

"  Nathaniel  Parker  Willis  was  in  full  bloom  when  I  opened  my 
first  Portfolio.  He  had  made  himself  known  by  his  religious  poetry, 
published  in  his  father's  paper,  I  think,  and  signed  '  Roy.'  He  had 
started  the  'American  Magazine,'  afterwards  merged  into  the  'New 


THE  KNICKERBOCKER   SCHOOL          223 

York  Mirror.'     He  had  then  left  off  writing  scripture  pieces,  and 
taken  to  lighter  forms  of  verse.     He  had  just  written 

" '  I  'm  twenty-two,  I  'm  twenty-two,  — 

They  idly  give  me  joy, 
As  if  I  should  be  glad  to  know 
That  I  was  less  a  boy.' 

"  He  was  young,  therefore,  and  already  famous.  He  came  very  near 
being  very  handsome.  He  was  tall;  his  hair,  of  light  brown  colour, 
waved  in  luxuriant  abundance ;  his  cheek  was  as  rosy  as  if  it  had 
been  painted  to  show  behind  the  footlights ;  he  dressed  with  artistic 
elegance.  He  was  something  between  a  remembrance  of  Count 
D'Orsay  and  an  anticipation  of  Oscar  Wilde.  There  used  to  be  in 
the  gallery  of  the  Luxembourg  a  picture  of  Hippolytus  and  Phaedra, 
in  which  the  beautiful  young  man,  who  had  kindled  a  passion  in  the 
heart  of  his  wicked  step-mother,  always  reminded  me  of  Willis,  in 
spite  of  the  shortcomings  of  the  living  face  as  compared  with  the 
ideal.  The  painted  youth  is  still  blooming  on  the  canvas,  but  the 
fresh-cheeked,  jaunty  young  author  of  the  year  1830  has  long  faded 
out  of  human  sight.  I  took  the  leaves  which  lie  before  me  as  I 
write,  from  his  coffin,  as  it  lay  just  outside  the  door  of  St.  Paul's 
Church,  on  a  sad,  overclouded  winter's  day,  in  the  year  1867.  At 
that  earlier  time,  Willis  was  by  far  the  most  prominent  young  Ameri 
can  author." 

When  the  "  Knickerbocker  Gallery  "  appeared,  Willis  was 
so  ill  that  he  could  contribute  only  a  jaunty  apology,  of  which 
the  closing  sentence  is  typical :  — 

Well,  success  to  you  !  —  only  don't  be  so  prosperous  as  to  stagger 
our  faith  in  your  other  deservings  —  and  among  those  who  will  "  take 
stock "  in  you  (as  long  as  you  continue  "  well-requited ")  put  me 
down  for  a  share  or  two,  and  believe  me, 

Yours  truly,  N.  P.  WILLIS. 

In  fact,  he  was  approaching  the  laborious  and  melancholy 
end  of  a  career  whose  earlier  phases  had  been  full  of  care 
less  gaiety.  He  was  born  at  Portland,  Maine,  in  1807. 
His  father,  a  professional  journalist,  was  an  ardent  mem 
ber  of  the  old  Congregational  communion  to  which  the  dia 
lect  of  New  England  long  gave  the  name  of  "orthodox." 
When  the  son  was  a  mere  boy,  the  father  removed  to  Boston, 


224          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

where  he  ultimately  founded  that  remarkably  successful  chil 
dren's  paper,  —  now  circulating  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  — 
the  "  Youth's  Companion."  A  more  significant  fact  to  his 
son  was  that  the  godly  old  gentleman  became  a  deacon  of 
the  Park  Street  Church.  As  we  shall  see  later,  this  office 
involved  social  isolation.  In  Boston,  Unitarianism  had  swept 
away  the  pristine  religious  traditions.  Among  the  older 
churches  only  the  Old  South  had  stuck  by  its  original  Cal- 
vinistic  colours,  and  its  members  generally  remained  orthodox 
at  the  expense  of  their  visiting  lists.  The  Park  Street  Church, 
still  so  conspicuous  from  Boston  Common,  had  been  founded 
as  a  new  citadel  of  Calvinism ;  and  it  had  maintained  its 
principles  so  bravely  as  to  win  for  itself  in  local  slang  the 
hardly  yet  forgotten  name  of  "  Brimstone  Corner."  In  the 
Boston  of  Willis's  youth,  then,  its  members  were  socially  in 
a  position  similar  to  that  of  contemporary  English  Dissenters. 
They  are  said  to  have  consoled  themselves,  as  indeed  orthodox 
Yankees  sometimes  do  still,  by  thoughts  of  what  would  hap 
pen  beyond  the  grave  to  the  triumphant  religious  liberals  who 
on  earth  rarely  invited  them  to  dinner. 

Born  and  bred  amid  such  surroundings  as  this,  Willis, 
whose  temper  was  among  the  most  frivolously  adventurous 
of  his  time,  began  life  in  a  state  of  edifying  religious  con 
viction.  He  was  sent  to  school  at  that  stronghold  of  ortho 
doxy,  Andover,  which  was  still  trying  to  defend  the  old 
faith  so  completely  routed  by  Unitarianism  at  Harvard  Col 
lege.  From  Andover,  instead  of  going  to  Harvard  —  in 
orthodox  opinion  the  gate  of  the  broad  road  to  perdition  —  he 
was  sent  to  complete  the  salvation  of  his  soul  at  Yale.  At 
the  prayer  meetings  which  refreshed  school-boy  life  at  Ando 
ver,  he  had  displayed  unusual  gifts  of  exhortation.  The 
creative  powers  thus  evinced  found  later  expression  in  diluted 
narrative  poetry  which  dealt  with  Old  Testament  stories 
in  a  temper  somewhat  like  that  of  Leigh  Hunt,  and  which 
is  said  long  to  have  remained  among  the  favourite  edifications 


THE  KNICKERBOCKER   SCHOOL         225 

of  devout  old  persons  in  New  England.  But  even  Yale 
orthodoxy  failed  to  keep  Willis  within  the  fold.  He  was 
handsome ;  women,  particularly  older  than  he,  were  apt  to  fall 
in  love  with  him.  He  had  an  instinctive  aptitude  for  gaiety, 
and  when  he  came  back  to  Boston  from  college,  this  son  of  a 
Park  Street  deacon  was  the  most  elaborate  fop  who  had  ever 
been  seen  on  the  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  In  spite  of 
considerable  religious  backsliding,  however,  he  was  unable  in 
Boston  to  overcome  the  social  traditions  which  kept  his  family 
apart  from  fashion.  He  tried  a  little  editorial  work  there, 
with  small  success  ;  and  he  ended  by  quitting  the  town  in 
disgust,  hating  it  for  life,  and  returning  only  for  burial  nearly 
forty  years  later. 

In  New  York  he  found  things  more  to  his  taste.  Before 
1831  he  had  become  associated  with  one  George  P.  Morris, 
—  now  remembered  only  as  the  author  of  a  once  popular  sen 
timental  poem  beginning  "  Woodman,  spare  that  tree,"  —  in 
the  conduct  of  a  periodical  called  the  New  York  "  Mirror." 
Between  them  they  hit  upon  a- plan  of  sending  Willis  abroad, 
from  whence  he  should  write  regular  European  letters ;  so  to 
Europe  he  went  at  the  age  of  twenty-five.  His  career  there 
for  the  next  five  years  seems  incredible.  His  pecuniary 
resources  are  said  to  have  been  limited  to  ten  dollars  a  week, 
which  Morris  agreed  to  send  him ;  so,  of  course,  he  never 
really  knew  how  his  bills  were  to  be  paid.  But  he  somehow 
got  letters  of  introduction ;  he  managed  nominally  to  attach 
himself  to  an  American  legation  ;  and,  before  long,  there  was 
little  fashionable  society  in  Europe  where  he  was  not  cordially 
and  even  intimately  received.  When  toward  the  end  of  his 
stay  abroad  he  went  to  Dublin,  it  is  recorded  that  he  took  to 
the  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland  a  letter  of  introduction  from  a 
near  relative  of  that  functionary,  who  described  him  as  an 
eminent  young  American  likely  to  attain  the  Presidency. 
Soon  afterward  he  married  an  English  heiress,  daughter  of  a 
general  in  the  army,  to  whom  his  financial  condition  was  per- 

15 


226          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

fectly  well  known.  Meanwhile  he  supported  himself  by 
regular  correspondence  with  the  New  York  "  Mirror."  His 
letters  are  better  than  tradition  has  represented  them.  At  least 
in  New  England,  people  have  been  apt  to  fancy  that  Willis 
forced  his  way  on  false  pretences  into  European  society,  and 
then  wrote  home  for  publication  no  end  of  things  which  came 
to  his  knowledge  in  private,  and  which  ought  to  have  been 
recorded,  if  at  all,  only  in  posthumously  printed  diaries.  In 
this  charge  there  is  a  grain  of  truth  ;  but  whoever  will  read 
Willis's  letters  must  feel  that  although  in  his  day  there  may 
have  been  a  certain  impropriety  in  publishing  any  record  of 
private  life,  he  wrote  not  only  pleasantly,  but  with  tactful- 
good-humour.  Superficial  as  you  like,  his  letters  are  vivid, 
animated,  and  carefully  reticent  of  anything  which  might 
justly  have  displeased  the  persons  concerned.  If  personal 
journalism  is  ever  to  be  tolerated,  Willis's  may  be  taken  as  a 
model  of  it. 

The  circumstances  of  his  later  career  need  not  be  detailed. 
In  brief  as  set  forth  in  Professor  Beers's  biography  of  him, 
they  were  constantly  more  to  his  credit.  His  first  wife  died, 
and  he  married  again.  He  got  into  various  money  troubles, 
and  he  worked  unremittingly  to  support  himself  and  his  family 
honourably,  until  the  disease  came  upon  him  which  ended  his 
life  at  the  age  of  sixty-one.  By  that  time  the  literary  fashion 
which  he  exemplified  was  generally  outworn  ;  but  the  "  Home 
Journal,"  which  he  founded,  continues  to  this  day  its  weekly 
career  of  chatty  personal  journalism. 

In  Willis's  palmy  days,  he  was  the  most  popular  American 
writer  out  of  New  England.  He  dashed  ofF  all  sorts  of  things 
with  great  ease,  —  not  only  such  descriptions  of  life  and  people 
as  formed  the  staple  of  his  contributions  to  the  "  Mirror,"  but 
poems  and  stories,  and  whatever  else  belongs  to  occasional 
periodical  writing.  Throughout,  his  prose  style  had  the  pro 
voking  kind  of  jaunty  triviality  evident  in  the  little  sentence 
which  closed  his  letter  to  Clark  for  the  "  Knickerbocker  Gal- 


THE  KNICKERBOCKER  SCHOOL         227 

lery."     The  following  poem  is  perhaps  his  highest  achieve 
ment  in  serious  verse  :  — 

"UNSEEN    SPIRITS. 

"  The  shadows  lay  along  Broadway, 

3T  was  near  the  twilight-tide  — 
And  slowly  there  a  lady  fair 

Was  walking  in  her  pride. 
Alone  walked  she;  but,  viewlessly, 

Walked  spirits  at  her  side. 

"  Peace  charmed  the  street  beneath  her  feet, 

And  Honour  charmed  the  air  ; 
And  all  astir  looked  kind  on  her, 
And  called  her  good  as  fair  — 
For  all  God  ever  gave  to  her,  ~1 
She  kept  with  chary  care. 

"  She  kept  with  care  her  beauties  rare, 

From  lovers  warm  and  true, 
For  her  heart  was  cold  to  all  but  gold, 

And  the  rich  came  not  to  woo  — 
But  honoured  well  are  charms  to  sell 

If  priests  the  selling  do. 

"  Now  walking  there  was  one  more  fair  — 

A  slight  girl,  lily-pale; 
And  she  had  unseen  company 

To  make  the  spirit  quail ; 
'Twixt  Want  and  Scorn  she  walked  forlorn, 

And  nothing  could  avail. 

"  No  mercy  now  can  clear  her  brow 

For  this  world's  peace  to  pray ; 
For,  as  love's  wild  prayer  dissolved  in  air, 

Her  woman's  heart  gave  way  !  — 
But  the  sin  forgiven  by  Christ  in  heaven 

By  man  is  cursed  alway  !  " 

Work  so  slight  may  seem  hardly  worth  emphasis.  As  time 
passes,  however,  Willis  appears  more  and  more  the  most  char 
acteristic  New  York  man  of  letters  after  the  year  1832, — 
the  most  typical  of  the  school  which  flourished  throughout 
the  career  of  the  "  Knickerbocker  Magazine."  The  earlier 


228          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-185? 

writers  whom  we  have  considered  were  all  imitative,  or  at  least 
their  work  seems  reminiscent.  Brockden  Brown  is  reminis 
cent  of  Godwin,  Irving  of  Goldsmith,  Cooper  of  Scott, 
Bryant  of  Cowper  and  Wordsworth,  and  so  on.  In  a  similar 
way  Willis  may  be  said  to  remind  one  of  Leigh  Hunt,  and 
perhaps  here  and  there  of  Benjamin  Disraeli,  and  Bulwer. 
The  contrast  of  these  last  names  with  those  of  the  earlier 
models  tells  the  story.  As  men  of  letters,  Godwin  and  Gold 
smith  and  Scott  and  Cowper  and  Wordsworth  are  distinctly 
more  important  than  Bulwer  and  Disraeli  and  Leigh  Hunt. 
The  merits  of  the  former  group  are  solid  ;  those  of  the  latter 
meretricious ;  and  when  you  undertake  to  dilute  Leigh 
Hunt  and  Disraeli  and  Bulwer  with  Croton  water,  you  get  a 
stimulant  hardly  strong  enough  sensibly  to  affect  heads  sea 
soned  to  draughts  of  sound  old  literature.  As  a  descriptive  /• 
journalist,  Willis  did  work  which  is  still  worth  reading.  His 
letters  from  abroad  give  pleasant  and  vivid  pictures  of  European 
life  in  the  30*3  ;  his  letters  "  from  Under  a  Bridge  "  give  pleas 
ant  pictures  of  country  life  in  our  Middle  States  a  little  later ; 
but  when  it  comes  to  anything  like  literature,  one  can  hardly 
avoid  the  conviction  that  he  had  nothing  to  say. 

In  the  work  of  the  earlier  New  York  school,  and  even  in 
the  work  of  Poe,  we  have  already  remarked,  nothing  was 
produced  which  touched  seriously  on  either  God's  eternities 
or  the  practical  conduct  of  life  in  the  United  States.  The 
literature  of  Brockden  Brown,  of  Irving,  of  Cooper,  and  of 
Poe  is  only  a  literature  of  pleasure,  possessing,  so  far  as  it  has 
excellence  at  all,  only  the  excellence  of  conscientious  refine 
ment.  Willis,  too,  so  far  as  his  work  may  be  called  litera 
ture,  made  nothing  higher  than  literature  of  pleasure  ;  and 
for  all  the  bravery  with  which  he  worked  throughout  his 
later  life,  one  cannot  help  feeling  in  his  writings,  as  well 
as  in  some  of  the  social  records  of  his  earlier  years,  a  palpable 
falsity  of  taste.  He  was  a  man  of  far  wider  social  experience 
than  Bryant  or  Cooper,  probably  indeed  than  Irving  him- 


THE  KNICKERBOCKER   SCHOOL         229 

self;  and  those  who  personally  knew  him  remember  him,  as 
Dr.  Holmes  did,  pleasantly  and  kindly.  Yet,  after  all,  one 
feels  in  him  rather  the  quality  of  a  dashing  adventurer,  of 
an  amiably  honourable  Bohemian,  than  such  secure  sense  of 
personal  distinction  as  marked  Bryant  and  Irving  and  their 
contemporaries  in  New  England.  A  school  of  letters  in 
which  a  man  of  Willis's  quality  could  attain  the  eminence 
which  for  years  made  him  conspicuous  was  certainly  declining. 
The  "  Knickerbocker  Magazine,"  which  came  to  an  end 
in  1864,  began  to  fade  about  1857.  In  that  year  the  "At 
lantic  Monthly "  was  started  in  Boston,  and  in  New  York 
"  Harper's  Weekly."  Both  persist ;  this  date,  then,  two 
years  after  the  "  Knickerbocker  Gallery  "  was  published,  is  a 
convenient  one  at  which  to  close  our  first  survey  of  the  litera 
ture  produced  in  the  Middle  States.  There  are  certain  names 
which  we  might  have  mentioned  ;  Mrs.  Kirkland,  for  example, 
whom  Poe  records  among  the  Literati,  wrote  some  sketches 
of  life  in  the  Middle  West  which  are  still  vivid,  and  although 
of  slight  positive  merit,  decidedly  interesting  as  history. 
Hermann  Melville,  with  his  books  about  the  South  Seas, 
which  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  is  said  to  have  declared  the 
best  ever  written,  and  with  his  novels  of  maritime  adventure, 
began  a  career  of  literary  promise,  which  never  came  to 
fruition.  Certain  writers,  too,  who  reached  maturity  later 
had  already  made  themselves  known,  —  Bayard  Taylor,  for 
example,  and  George  William  Curtis  ;  and  in  regular  journal 
ism  Horace  Greeley  had  made  the  "  New  York  Tribune  " 
already  a  strong  and  important  ally  of  the  reforms  which 
were  strenuously  declaring  themselves  in  New  England.  But 
certainly  between  1833  and  1857  the  "  Tribune,"  even  with 
Margaret  Fuller  and  later  with  George  Ripley  as  its  literary 
critics,  had  not  in  New  York  perspective  such  characteristic 
importance  as  had  the  "  Knickerbocker  Magazine."  What 
the  u  Tribune  "  stood  for,  was  rather  an  offshoot  of  some 
New  England  energies  which  we  shall  consider  later. 


230          THE  MIDDLE  STATES,  1798-1857 

The  truth  is,  that  the  school  of  letters  which  began  in  1798 
with  the  work  of  Brockden  Brown  and  persisted  throughout 
the  lifetime  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  writings  of  Irving, 
of  Cooper,  and  of  Bryant,  never  dealt  with  deeply  significant 
matters.  Almost  from  the  time  when  Bryant  first  collected 
his  poems,  the  literature  made  in  New  York  and  under  its 
influence  became  less  and  less  important.  New  York  news 
papers,  to  be  sure,  of  which  the  best  examples  are  the  "  Even 
ing  Post  "  and  the  "  Tribune,"  were  steadily  gaining  in 
merit  and  influence;  but  literature  pure  and  simple  was  not. 
If  we  may  hold  Poe  to  have  belonged  to  the  general  phase 
of  American  literary  activity  which  we  have  been  consider 
ing,  —  the  only  phase  which  during  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  developed  itself  outside  of  New  England, 
—  we  may  say  that  this  literary  activity  reached  its  acme  in 
the  work  of  Poe,  itself  for  all  its  merit  not  deeply  significant. 
And  even  in  Poe's  time,  and  still  more  surely  a  little  later, 
the  literature  of  which  he  proves  the  most  important  master 
declined  into  such  good-humoured  trivialities  as  one  finds  in 
the  "  Knickerbocker  Gallery  "~  amPin  the  life  and  work  of 
Willis.  By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  in  fact, 
the  literary  impulse  of  the  Middle  States  had  proved  abor 
tive.  For  the  serious  literature  of  America  we  must  revert 
to  New  England. 


BOOK  V 

THE    RENAISSANCE    OF   NEW 
ENGLAND 


BOOK    V 

THE  RENAISSANCE   OF   NEW  ENGLAND 

I 

SOME    GENERAL    CHARACTERISTICS    OF    NEW    ENGLAND 

FROM  the  time,  shortly  after  1720,  when  Franklin  left  Boston, 
where  Increase  and  Cotton  Mather  were  still  preaching,  we 
have  paid  little  attention  to  that  part  of  the  country.  For 
during  the  seventy-two  years  which  intervened  between  Cot 
ton  Mather's  death  and  the  nineteenth  century,  Boston  was 
of  less  literary  importance  than  it  was  before  or  than  it  has 
been  since.  To  understand  its  revival,  we  must  call  to 
mind  a  little  more  particularly  some  general  characteristics  of 
New  England. 

A  glance  at  any  map  will  show  that  Boston,  whose  geo 
graphical  position  has  obviously  made  it  the  principal  city  of 
that  region,  may  be  distinguished  from  most  American  cities 
by  the  fact  that,  comparatively  speaking,  it  is  not  on  the  way 
anywhere.  The  main  line  of  travel  from  abroad  to-day 
comes  to  the  port  of  New  York.  People  bound  thence  for 
Washington  proceed  through  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore ; 
people  bound  westward  are  pretty  sure  to  tend  toward 
Chicago ;  people  going  southwest  pass  through  St.  Louis 
or  New  Orleans;  people  going  around  the  world  generally 
sail  from  San  Francisco ;  but  the  only  people  who  are  apt 
to  make  the  excursion  from  New  York  to  Boston  and  return 
are  those  who  do  so  on  purpose.  Of  course,  the  ease  of  in 
tercommunication  nowadays  combines  with  several  other 
causes  to  disguise  this  isolation  of  the  capital  city  of  New 


234     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

England.  All  the  same,  an  isolation,  socially  palpable  to  any 
one  who  lives  there,  really  characterises  not  only  the  city,  but 
the  whole  region  of  which  it  is  the  natural  centre. 

This  physical  isolation  was  somewhat  less  pronounced  when 
the  English-speaking  settlements  in  America  were  confined 
to  the  fringe  of  colonies  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard.  Even 
then,  however,  a  man  proceeding  by  land  from  Boston  to 
Philadelphia  had  to  pass  through  New  York;  and  so  one 
proceeding  from  New  York  to  Virginia  or  the  Carolinas  had 
to  pass  through  Philadelphia ;  but  the  only  people  who  needed 
to  visit  Boston  were  people  bound  thither.  It  had  happened, 
meanwhile,  that  the  regions  of  Eastern  Massachusetts,  al 
though  not  literally  the  first  American  colonies  to  be  settled, 
were  probably  the  first  to  be  politically  and  socially  developed. 
Sewall's  "  Diary,"  for  example,  is  an  artless  record  of  busy 
life  in  and  about  Boston,  from  1674  to  1729.  In  spite  of 
the  many  archaic  passages  which  make  it  so  quaintly  vivid, 
it  has  few  more  remarkable  traits  than  the  fact  that  the  sur 
roundings  and  in  many  respects  the  society  which  it  represents 
are  hardly  yet  unfamiliar  to  people  born  and  bred  in  Eastern 
New  England. 

In  the  first  place,  the  whole  country  from  the  Piscataqua 
to  Cape  Cod,  and  westward  to  the  Connecticut  River,  was 
almost  as  settled  as  it  is  to-day.  Many  towns  of  Sewall's 
time,  to  be  sure,  have  been  divided  into  smaller  ones ;  but  the 
name  and  the  local  organisation  of  almost  every  town  of  his 
time  still  persist ;  in  two  hundred  years  the  municipal  outlines 
of  Massachusetts  have  undergone  hardly  more  change  than 
any  equal  space  of  England  or  of  France.  In  Sewall's  time, 
again,  the  population  of  this  region,  though  somewhat  different 
from  that  which  at  present  exists,  was  much  like  that  which 
was  lately  familiar  to  anybody  who  can  remember  the  New 
England  country  forty  years  ago.  It  was  homogeneous,  and 
so  generally  native  that  any  inhabitants  but  born  Yankees  at 
tracted  attention ;  and  the  separate  towns  were  so  distinct 


NEW  ENGLAND    CHARACTERISTICS     235 

that  any  one  who  knew  much  of  the  country  could  probably 
infer  from  a  man's  name  just  where  he  came  from.  So  iso 
lated  a  region,  with  so  indigenous  a  population,  naturally  de 
veloped  a  pretty  rigid  social  system. 

Tradition  has  long  supposed  this  system  to  have  been  ex 
tremely  democratic,  as  in  some  superficial  aspects  it  was.  The 
popular  forms  of  local  government  which  were  early  established, 
the  general  maintenance  of  schools  in  every  town  at  public 
expense,  and  the  fact  that  almost  any  respectable  trade  was 
held  a  proper  occupation  for  anybody,  have  gone  far  to  dis 
guise  the  truth  that  from  the  very  settlement  of  New  England 
certain  people  there  have  enjoyed  an  often  recognised  position  of 
social  superiority.  This  Yankee  aristocracy,  to  be  sure,  has 
never  been  strictly  hereditary ;  with  almost  every  generation 
old  names  have  socially  vanished  and  new  ones  appeared  until 
it  is  now  asserted  that  only  one  family  of  Boston  has  main 
tained  itself  without  marked  vicissitude  from  the  settlement 
of  the  town  to  the  present  day.  Until  well  into  the  nine 
teenth  century,  however,  two  facts  about  New  England  society 
can  hardly  be  questioned :  at  any  given  time  there  was  a 
tacitly  recognised  upper  class,  whose  social  eminence  was 
sometimes  described  by  the  word  "  quality ; "  and  although  in 
the  course  of  time  most  families  had  their  ups  and  downs,  the 
changes  in  this  respect  were  never  so  swift  or  so  radical  as 
materially  to  alter  the  general  social  structure.  Names  may 
have  changed,  but  not  traditions  or  ideals;  and  no  matter 
how  fallen  in  fortune,  people  who  had  once  been  of  good 
stock  rarely  forgot  the  fact  and  rarely  suffered  it  to  be 
forgotten. 

In  the  beginning,  as  Cotton  Mather's  old  word  "theo 
cracy  "  asserted,  the  socially  and  politically  dominant  class 
was  the  clergy.  Until  1885,  indeed,  a  relic  of  this  fact 
survived  in  the  Quinquennial  Catalogues  of  Harvard  Col 
lege,  where  the  names  of  all  graduates  who  became  ministers 
were  still  distinguished  by  italics.  In  the  same  catalogues 


236     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

the  names  of  graduates  who  became  governors  or  judges, 
or  in  certain  other  offices  attained  public  distinction,  were 
printed  in  capital  letters.  These  now  trivial  details  indicate 
how  the  old  social  hierarchy  of  New  England  was  based  on 
education,  public  service,  and  the  generally  acknowledged 
importance  of  the  ministry.  When  the  mercantile  class  of 
the  eighteenth  century  grew  rich,  it  enjoyed  in  Boston  a 
similar  social  distinction,  maintained  by  pretty  careful  obser 
vance  of  the  social  traditions  which  by  that  time  had  become 
immemorial.  And  as  the  growing  complexity  of  society 
in  country  towns  developed  the  learned  professions  of  law 
and  medicine,  the  squire  and  the  doctor  were  almost  every 
where  recognised  as  persons  of  consideration.  From  the  be 
ginning,  meanwhile,  there  had  been  in  New  England  two 
other  kinds  of  people,  tacitly  felt  to  be  of  lower  rank ;  the 
more  considerable  were  those  plain  folks  who,  maintaining 
personal  respectability,  never  rose  to  intellectual  or  political 
eminence,  and  never  made  more  than  enough  money  to  keep 
decently  out  of  debt ;  the  other  comprised  those  descendants 
of  immigrant  servants  and  the  like  whose  general  character 
resembled  that  of  the  poor  whites  of  the  South.  Just  as  the 
local  aristocracy  of  fifty  years  ago  provided  almost  every 
Yankee  village  with  its  principal  people,  so  this  lowest  class 
contributed  to  almost  every  village  a  recognised  group  of 
village  drunkards. 

The  political  forms  which  governed  this  isolated  popu 
lation  were  outwardly  democratic ;  the  most  characteristic 
were  the  town  meetings  of  which  so  much  has  been 
written.  The  population  itself,  too,  was  nowhere  so  large 
as  to  allow  any  resident  of  a  given  town  to  be  a  complete 
stranger  to  any  other;  but  as  the  generations  passed,  the 
force  of  local  tradition  slowly,  insensibly  increased  until, 
long  before  1800,  the  structure  of  New  England  society  had 
become  extremely  rigid.  Sewall,  as  we  have  seen,  preserves 
an  unconscious  picture  of  this  society  in  the  closing  years  of  the 


NEW  ENGLAND   CHARACTERISTICS     237 

seventeenth  century  and  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth.  In 
more  deliberate  literature  there  are  various  more  conscious 
pictures  of  it  later.  To  mention  only  a  few,  Mrs.  Stowe's 
"  Oldtown  Folks"  gives  an  admirably  vivid  account  of  the 
Norfolk  County  country  about  1800;  Whittier's  "Snow- 
Bound  "  preserves  in  "  Flemish  pictures  "  the  Essex  County 
farmers  of  a  few  years  later;  and  Lowell's  papers  on 
"  Cambridge  Thirty  Years  Ago  "  and  on  "  A  Great  Public 
Character"  —  Josiah  Quincy  —  give  more  stately  pictures 
of  Middlesex  County  at  about  the  same  time.  The  inci 
dental  glimpses  of  life  in  Jacob  Abbott's  Rollo  Books  are 
artlessly  true  of  Yankee  life  in  the  40'$ ;  Miss  Lucy  Lar- 
com's  "  New  England  Girlhood  "  and  Dr.  Edward  Everett 
Hale's  more  cursory  "  New  England  Boyhood "  carry  the 
story  from  a  little  earlier  to  a  little  later.  Miss  Alcott's 
"  Little  Women  "  does  for  the  '6o's  what  "  Rollo  "  does  for 
the  '4-o's.  And  the  admirable  tales  of  Miss  Mary  Wilkins 
and  of  Miss  Sarah  Orne  Jewett  portray  the  later  New  Eng 
land  country  in  its  decline.  In  all  these  works,  and  in  the 
many  others  of  which  we  may  take  them  as  typical,  you  will 
find  people  of  quality  familiarly  mingling  with  others,  but 
tacitly  recognised  as  socially  superior  almost  like  an  hereditary 
aristocracy. 

A  characteristic  example  of  the  family  discipline  which  en 
sued  is  preserved  in  the  diary  of  a  Boston  merchant  who  was 
born  before  the  Revolution  and  died  at  about  the  time  when 
the  "  Knickerbocker  Gallery  "  enriched  the  literature  of  New 
York.  After  the  good  old  Yankee  fashion,  this  gentleman 
had  a  very  large  family.  One  of  his  younger  sons  had 
fallen  out  of  favour;  and  five  of  his  elder  children,  all  mar 
ried  and  in  respectably  independent  positions,  desired  to  in 
tercede  for  their  erring  brother.  They  were  afraid,  it  appears, 
to  broach  the  subject  in  conversation ;  so  meeting  together 
with  their  husbands  and  wives,  they  drew  up  a  paper  signed 
by  all  ten,  praying  in  diplomatically  formal  terms  for 


238     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

parental  leniency.  This  paper  was  gravely  presented  without 
comment  to  the  head  of  the  family.  He  received  it  with 
dignified  surprise,  and  kept  it  under  prayerful  consideration  for 
a  number  of  days.  Finally,  having  deliberately  made  up  his 
mind  that  paternal  authority  must  not  be  questioned  even  by 
adult  children,  he  sent  for  the  signers  one  by  one,  to  demand 
that  the  signatures  be  separately  erased;  and  apparently  all 
but  one  of  the  signers  regretfully  but  dutifully  obeyed. 
Doubtless  an  excessive  incident  of  the  patriarchal  rigidity  of 
New  England  life  about  1830,  this  is  not  unique;  and  it  is 
clearly  a  thing  which  could  have  occurred  only  in  a  society 
of  which  the  structural  traditions  were  immemorially  fixed. 

Such  fixity  of  social  structure,  developed  during  two  cen 
turies  of  geographical  and  social  isolation,  could  not  help 
resulting  in  characteristic  ways  of  thinking  and  feeling. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  deepest  traits  of  Yankee 
character  had  their  origin  in  the  intense  religious  convictions 
of  the  immigrants.  The  dominant  class  of  pristine  New 
England  were  the  clergy,  whose  temper  so  permeated  our 
seventeenth-century  literature.  Their  creed  was  sternly  Cal- 
vinistic ;  and  Calvinism  imposes  upon  whoever  accepts  it  the 
duty  of  constant,  terribly  serious  self-searching.  The  question 
before  every  individual  who  holds  this  grim  faith  is  whether 
he  can  discern  within  himself  the  signs  which  shall  prove  him 
probably  among  the  elect  of  God.  The  one  certain  sign  of 
his  regeneration  may  be  found  in  spontaneous  consciousness  of 
ability  to  use  his  will  in  accordance  with  that  of  God  ;  in 
other  words,  the  elect,  and  no  one  else,  can  be  admitted  by 
unmerited  divine  grace  into  something  like  spiritual  com 
munion  with  God  himself.  God  himself  embodies  absolute 
right  and  absolute  truth.  What  the  strenuously  self-searching 
inner  life  of  serious  Yankees  aimed  to  attain,  then,  was  im 
mutable  conviction  of  absolute  truth. 

This  it  sought  under  the  guidance  of  a  tyrannically  domi 
nant  priestly  class.  Till  long  after  1800,  the  orthodox 


NEW  ENGLAND   CHARACTERISTICS     239 

clergy  of  New  England  maintained  their  formal  eminence 
almost  unbroken.  In  every  village  the  settled  minister,  who 
usually  held  his  office  for  life,  was  a  man  apart ;  but  he  was 
in  constant  correspondence  with  his  fellows  elsewhere.  If  by 
any  chance  a  New  England  parson  happened  to  go  away 
from  home,  he  naturally  put  up  at  the  minister's  in  every 
town  where  he  passed  a  night.  As  Dr.  Holmes  once  put 
the  case,  the  Yankee  clergy  formed  something  like  a  Brahmin 
caste,  poor  in  the  goods  of  this  world,  but  autocratic  in 
power. 

A  fact  about  them  which  is  often  forgotten,  however,  pro 
foundly  influenced  New  England  life.  Once  in  office,  they 
exercised  tyrannical  authority  ;  but  to  exercise  this,  they  had  to 
get  into  office  and  to  stay  there.  In  most  parts  of  the  world 
a  dominant  hierarchy  is  self-perpetuating :  it  is  the  central 
authority  of  the  Roman  Church,  for  example,  which  appoints 
priests  all  over  the  world  ;  it  is  the  distortion  of  this  system 
effected  in  England  by  the  Reformation  which  allows  the  Eng 
lish  gentry  still  to  nominate  the  rectors  of  parishes  adjacent  to 
their  estates.  In  New  England,  on  the  other  hand,  the  con 
gregations  themselves  called  their  ministers  from  the  begin 
ning,  just  as  they  do  still.  At  first,  to  be  sure,  the  only  actual 
members  of  New  England  churches  were  people  who  had  satis 
fied  the  clergy  that  they  were  probably  elect ;  but  once  church 
members,  they  had  a  right  to  choose  their  minister  by  majority 
vote.  The  elect  of  God,  as  somebody  has  phrased  it,  became 
the  electors  of  God's  chosen.  So  even  if  the  clergy  were  so 
conspicuously  the  chosen  vessels  of  the  Lord,  the  members 
of  the  New  England  churches  may  be  described  as  the 
potters  by  whose  hands  the  Lord  was  content  to  see  modelled 
the  vessels  of  his  choice. 

From  this  state  of  things  resulted  a  palpable  check  on  the 
power  of  the  old  Yankee  ministers.  In  one  aspect  they  were 
autocratic  tyrants ;  in  another  they  were  subject  to  the  tyran 
nical  power  of  an  irresponsible  majority  vote.  The  kind  of 


240     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

thing  which  sometimes  resulted  has  always  been  familiar  in 
America.  The  first  President  of  Harvard  College  was  com 
pelled  to  resign  his  office  because  he  believed  in  baptism  by- 
immersion  ;  after  twenty  years  of  service,  Jonathan  Edwards 
was  deposed  from  the  pulpit  of  Northampton  at  the  instance 
of  a  disaffected  congregation  ;  and  there  were  plenty  of  more 
fleshly  troubles  which  brought  about  similar  results.  The 
second  John  Cotton,  for  example,  the  son  of  the  first  min 
ister  of  Boston  and  himself  minister  of  Plymouth,  was  forced 
to  leave  his  pulpit  under  circumstances  which  may  have  sug 
gested  to  Hawthorne  the  story  of  u  The  Scarlet  Letter,"  and 
though  he  asserted  his  innocence  to  the  end,  he  died  obscurely 
in  the  Carolinas.  If  the  old  New  England  clergy,  in  fact, 
felt  bound  to  watch  and  guard  their  congregations,  whose 
errors  they  denounced  with  all  the  solemnity  of  divine  author 
ity,  the  congregations  from  the  beginning  returned  the  com 
pliment.  They  watched,  they  criticised,  they  denounced  errors 
of  the  clergy  almost  as  strenuously  as  the  clergy  watched 
and  criticised  and  denounced  theirs. 

One  can  see  why  this  state  of  things  was  unavoidable. 
Sincere  Calvinists  believed  that  divine  grace  vouchsafed  only 
to  the  elect  the  power  of  perceiving  absolute  truth.  The 
elect,  chosen  at  God's  arbitrary  pleasure,  might  just  as  prob 
ably  be  found  among  the  laity  as  the  unregenerate  might  be 
found  among  the  clergy.  And  any  mistake  anywhere  in  the 
system  was  no  trivial  matter;  it  literally  meant  hell-fire. 
The  deepest  fact  in  the  personal  life  of  oldest  New  England, 
then,  on  the  part  of  clergy  and  laity  alike,  was  this  intenseJy 
earnest,  reciprocally  tyrannical,  lifelong  search  for  absolute 
truth. 

Toward  the  period  of  the  American  Revolution  the  mer 
cantile  prosperity  of  Boston  had  tended  to  develop  in  the 
capital  city  of  New  England  the  social  class  familiar  to  us  in 
the  portraits  of  Copley ;  and  their  manners  were  becoming 
superficially  like  those  of  their  contemporary  England.  The 


NEW  ENGLAND   CHARACTERISTICS     241 

Boston  gentry  of  the  third  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
were  a  wealthier  class,  and  in  closer  contact  with  the  old 
world  than  any  had  been  before  their  time.  In  various 
aspects,  then,  it  is  probable  that  the  society  which  Copley 
painted  was  beginning  to  lose  some  characteristic  native 
traits.  If  these  were  momentarily  disappearing  from  the  sur 
face  of  fashionable  New  England  life,  however,  they  remained 
a  little  beneath  it  in  all  their  pristine  force.  The  literary  his 
tory  of  the  Revolution  shows  that  the  arguments  of  the  Tories 
may  be  distinguished  from  those  of  the  Revolutionists  by  a 
pretty  sharp  line.  The  temper  of  that  class  which  the  Revo 
lution  overthrew  was  marked  by  strong  attachment  to  estab 
lished  forms  of  law.  The  temper  of  that  revolutionary  party 
which  ultimately  triumphed  was  marked,  despite  respectful 
recognition  of  legal  precedent,  by  a  more  instinctive  liking 
for  absolute  right.  In  this  revolutionary  attachment  to 
absolute  right,  there  is  something  more  analogous  to  the  un 
questioning  faith  in  absolute  truth  which  marked  the  ancestral 
Calvinists  than  we  can  discern  in  that  respect  for  law  and 
order  which  had  become  the  dominant  sentiment  of  the 
Tories.  However  debatable  the  suggestion  may  be,  then, 
the  work  of  the  Revolution  in  New  England  sometimes  looks 
like  the  reassertion  of  the  old  native  type  in  a  society  which 
for  a  little  while  had  seemed  to  be  yielding  precedence  to 
persons  of  somewhat  more  extensive  sympathy. 

An  accidental  fact  familiar  to  people  who  know  Boston  will 
illustrate  this.  Copley  painted  the  Boston  gentry  of  his  time. 
Forty  or  fifty  years  later  the  gentry  then  controlling  the  destin 
ies  of  New  England  were  painted  by  Gilbert  Stuart.  Many 
old  Boston  families  still  preserve  Copley  portraits  as  heir 
looms;  many,  too,  similarly  preserve  portraits  by  Stuart;  and 
a  familiar  passage  in  the  first  section  of  Holmes's  "  Autocrat 
of  the  Breakfast  Table  "  describes  as  among  the  essential  pos 
sessions  of  a  man  of  family  in  Boston  portraits  by  both  of 
these  masters.  Whoever  knows  modern  Boston,  however,  will 


242     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

be  apt  to  feel  that,  according  to  this  test,  such  men  of  family 
are  few.  You  do  not  often  find  Copleys  and  Stuarts  in  the 
same  dining-room.  When  you  do,  one  or  the  other  have  gen 
erally  got  there  either  by  purchase  or  by  intermarriage.  The 
Copleys  and  the  Stuarts  usually  bear  different  names  ;  they 
rarely  represent  direct  ancestral  lines.  A  little  inquiry  will 
generally  reveal  another  fact  about  them.  As  likely  as  not 
the  Stuart  portraits  represent  people  whose  fortunes  still  per 
sist  ;  in  general,  the  Copleys  are  pathetic  survivals  of  fortunes 
which  went  down  in  the  general  economic  crash  of  revolution 
ary  times.  For  at  least  in  New  England  the  American  Rev 
olution  not  only  shook  to  its  foundations  the  structure  of 
fashionable  society,  but  it  so  disturbed  business  that  hardly 
anybody  was  able  to  pay  his  debts.  The  men  whom  Cop 
ley  painted  were  mostly  ruined  by  the  Revolution  ;  the  men 
whom  Stuart  painted  were  those  who,  as  the  country  sub 
sided  into  peace,  were  able  to  establish  fortunes  which  have 
lasted. 

This  new  generation  of  New  England  aristocracy,  however, 
many  of  whose  leaders  were  born  in  the  country  and  came  to 
Boston  in  search  of  fortune,  was  in  many  ways  sounder  and 
more  characteristically  native  than  the  generation  which  it 
supplanted.  To  speak  of  it  as  if  it  were  a  commonplace 
lower  class  which  had  emerged  from  a  great  political  convul 
sion,  would  be  totally  to  misunderstand  the  situation.  In  the 
first  place,  the  men  of  whom  it  was  composed  would  have 
been  recognised  anywhere  as  remarkably  able ;  in  the  second 
place,  if  generally  descended  from  families  for  the  moment  less 
conspicuous  than  those  whom  Copley  had  painted  a  generation 
earlier,  they  were  generally  people  who  had  inherited  the  sturdi 
est  traditions  of  New  England  manhood.  Many  of  them 
could  trace  descent  from  the  "  quality  "  of  a  century  or  so  be 
fore  ;  and  at  least  until  after  the  Revolution,  even  the  lower 
classes  of  native  New  England  had  never  so  far  departed  from 
the  general  native  type  as  to  resemble  a  European  populace 


NEW  ENGLAND   CHARACTERISTICS     243 

or  mob.  So  the  New  England  gentlemen  who  came  to  their 
best  when  Stuart  was  painting  were  mostly  people  who  re 
tained,  in  rather  more  purity  than  the  provincial  aristocracy 
which  for  a  while  had  been  more  fortunate,  the  vigorous 
traits  of  the  original  native  character.  Coming  to  prominence 
and  fortune,  too,  with  the  growth  of  our  new  national  life,  they 
combined  with  the  vigour  of  their  untired  blood  a  fine  flush  of 
independence. 

At  the  same  time  the  society  of  which  they  found  them 
selves  leaders  was  one  in  which  fixed  traditions  had  prevailed ; 
and  whatever  the  patriotism  of  these  gentlemen,  they  were  far 
from  radical  in  social  temper.  Finding  themselves  in  the 
position  which  before  the  Revolution  had  been  maintained  by 
the  people  whom  Copley  painted,  they  instinctively  copied 
many  of  the  best  external  characteristics  of  the  elder  aristoc 
racy.  A  petty  but  significant  indication  of  this  tendency 
may  be  found  in  their  general  habit  of  assuming  coats  of 
arms.  Yankee  heraldry  has  never  been  punctilious.  Long 
before  the  Revolution  people  who  found  themselves  prosper 
ous  were  apt  to  adopt  armorial  bearings,  often  far  from 
grammatical,  which  are  still  reverently  preserved  on  silver, 
tombstones  and  embroidered  hatchments.  Till  well  into  the 
nineteenth  century,  this  innocent  vanity  remained  a  general 
trait  of  prosperous  New  Englanders.  Just  as  the  new  and 
stronger  gentry  imitated  such  innocent  foibles  of  their  fore 
runners,  too,  they  imitated  their  manners.  The  chief  differ 
ence  between  the  two  classes  seems  to  have  been  a  distinct 
improvement  in  minor  morals.  The  extreme  propriety  which 
has  marked  the  surface  of  Boston  life  since  1800  seems  far 
less  evident  in  the  records  of  society  there  before  the  Revolution. 
The  rise  of  the  gentry  whom  Stuart  painted,  in  short,  meant  a 
maintenance  of  all  the  better  traits  of  the  elder  time,  together 
with  a  distinct  improvement  in  vigour  among  the  ruling  classes 
of  New  England,  and  with  a  somewhat  more  rigorous  code  of 
social  conduct.  The  traditions  which  come  from  this  period 


244     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

may  be  a  bit  priggish ;  they  are  not  a  bit  weak.  And  the  rise 
of  this  generation  to  power  marked  in  New  England  the  begin 
ning  of  a  new  era. 

Materially  this  new  era  declared  itself  in  several  obvious 
ways.  The  first  was  a  development  of  foreign  commerce, 
particularly  with  the  East  Indies.  This  brought  our  native 
sailors  and  merchants  into  personal  contact  with  every  part  of 
the  world  where  they  could  make  trade  pay.  The  consequent 
enlargement  of  the  mental  horizon  of  New  England  was 
almost  incalculable.  Incidentally  this  foreign  trade  helped 
develop  that  race  of  seamen  which  so  asserted  the  naval  power 
of  the  United  States  in  the  otherwise  ignominious  war  of  1812. 
The  embargo  which  preceded  that  war,  and  which  brought 
into  being  the  first  poem  of  Bryant,  considerably  diverted  the 
more  energetic  spirits  of  New  England  from  foreign  commerce, 
Before  long  there  ensued  that  development  of  manufactures, 
particularly  on  the  Merrimac  River,  which  remains  so  con 
spicuous  a  source  of  New  England  wealth.  And  at  just  about 
the  time  when  these  manufactures  were  finally  established, 
railways  at  last  brought  Boston  into  constant  and  swift  com 
munication  with  all  parts  of  the  New  England  country, — 
with  Salem  and  Newburyport,  with  Fitchburg,  with  Worcester, 
with  Providence,  and  with  various  parts  of  the  old  Plymouth 
colony. 

For  almost  two  hundred  years  New  England,  with  its 
intensely  serious  temper,  its  rigid  social  traditions,  and  its 
instinctive  belief  in  absolute  truth,  had  been  not  only  an  iso 
lated  part  of  the  world,  but  had  itself  consisted  of  small  isolated 
communities.  Now  at  a  moment  when,  at  least  relatively,  its 
material  prosperity  was  not  only  greater  than  ever  before,  but 
probably  greater  than  it  will  ever  be  again,  the  whole  region 
was  suddenly  flashed  into  unity.  It  was  during  this  period 
that  Boston  produced  the  most  remarkable  literary  expression 
which  has  yet  declared  itself  in  America.  To  say  that  this 
resulted  from  social  and  economic  causes  is  too  much ;  what 


NEW  ENGLAND   CHARACTERISTICS     245 

can  surely  be  asserted  is  that  the  highest  development  of  intel 
lectual  life  in  New  England  coincided  with  its  greatest  material 
prosperity.  From  the  time  when  Benjamin  Franklin  left 
Boston,  where  Cotton  Mather  was  still  preaching,  until  the 
days  when  Unitarianism  broke  out  there,  while  cotton  mills 
sprung  up  on  the  Merrimac,  Boston  even  in  America  was 
hardly  of  the  first  importance.  At  this  moment  it  has  probably 
ceased  to  be  so.  But  during  the  first  three  quarters  of  the 
nineteenth  century  its  economic  importance  was  pronounced ; 
and  intellectually  it  was  superior  to  any  other  city  which 
America  has  yet  known. 

What  happened  there  economically  and  politically,  is  not 
our  immediate  business.  What  does  concern  us  is  the  intel 
lectual  outburst ;  and  this,  as  we  shall  see,  took,  on  the  whole, 
a  form  which  may  best  be  described  as  renascent.  In  all  sorts 
of  intellectual  life  a  new  spirit  declared  itself;  but  this  new 
spirit  was  more  like  that  which  aroused  old  Italy  to  a  fresh 
sense  of  civilised  antiquity  than  like  a  spontaneous  manifesta 
tion  of  native  thought  or  feeling.  In  a  few  years  New  Eng 
land  developed  a  considerable  political  literature,  of  which  the 
height  was  reached  in  formal  oratory  ;  it  developed  a  new 
kind  of  scholarship,  of  which  the  height  was  reached  in 
admirable  works  of  history  ;  in  religion  it  developed  Unitarian- 
ism  ;  in  philosophy,  Transcendentalism ;  in  general  conduct, 
a  tendency  toward  reform  which  deeply  affected  our  national 
history ;  and  meantime  it  developed  the  most  mature  school 
of  pure  letters  which  has  yet  appeared  in  this  country.  To 
these  various  phases  of  the  New  England  Renaissance  we 
may  now  devote  ourselves  in  turn. 


II 

THE  NEW  ENGLAND  ORATORS 

IN  the  seventeenth  century,  the  literary  expression  of  New 
England  had  been  chiefly  theological.  In  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury  this  expression,  at  least  in  the  region  of  Boston,  became 
chiefly  political  and  was  on  the  whole  less  important  than 
the  political  writing  produced  to  the  southward.  In  each  case 
the  dominant  phase  of  New  England  expression  had  been 
decidedly  serious,  and  had  been  concerned  with  one  of  the 
ideals  most  deeply  associated  with  our  ancestral  language. 
These  ideals  we  have  broadly  called  those  of  the  Bible  and 
of  the  Common  Law  ;  the  former  incessantly  reminds  us  that 
we  must  do  right,  the  latter  that  we  must  maintain  our  rights. 
And  they  have  in  common  another  trait  than  either  their  deep 
association  with  the  temper  of  English-speaking  races  or  their 
pervasive  seriousness ;  both  are  generally  and  most  character 
istically  set  forth  by  means  of  public  speaking. 

From  the  very  beginning,  then,  the  appetite  for  public  dis 
course  in  New  England  had  been  keen.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  a  minister  who  preached  or  prayed  well  was  sure  of 
admiration  and  popularity  ;  in  the  eighteenth  century  a  similar 
popularity  was  the  certain  reward  of  a  lawyer,  too,  who  dis 
played  oratorical  power.  Some  early  records  of  Yankee 
appetite  for  oral  discourse  are  surprising :  Sewall  somewhere 
records,  for  example,  that  having  begun  to  pray  at  a  devotional 
meeting,  where  he  lost  sight  of  his  hour-glass,  he  continued  an 
unbroken  petition  to  the  Lord  for  something  like  two  hours, 
nor  did  he  remark  on  the  part  of  his  hearers  any  distracting 
manifestation  of  fatigue.  For  two  hundred  years,  Sunday 


THE    ORATORS  247 

services  in  Boston  were  crowded  ;  and  so  until  well  into  the 
nineteenth  century  were  the  regular  Thursday  lectures,  given 
by  various  ministers,  who  often  discussed  theolog  cal  subjects, 
but  frequently  fell  to  treating  public  matters  from  a  more  or 
less  theological  point  of  view.  Meanwhile,  there  were  few 
frivolous  amusements.  Theatres  were  held  in  such  abhorrence 
that  even  so  lately  as  1850  the  Boston  Museum,  whose  stock 
company  at  that  time  admirably  preserved  the  old  traditions  of 
the  English  stage,  advertised  its  auditorium  as  a  lecture-room 
and  its  performances  of  standard  comedies  and  farces  as 
lectures.  Although  church-going  was  a  duty,  then,  and  even 
going  to  the  Thursday  lectures  was  represented  as  something 
of  the  kind,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  Boston  people  felt 
genuine  interest  in  what  their  preachers  and  lecturers  said  to 
them;  and  until  long  after  1800  native  Yankees  had  a  tra 
ditional  liking,  which  they  honestly  believed  unaffected,  for 
hearing  people  talk  from  platforms  or  pulpits. 

When  the  Revolution  came,  accordingly,  the  surest  means 
of  attaining  eminence  in  New  England  was  public  speaking. 
Tames  Otis,  always  a  rmn  rather  of  speech  than  of  action, 
began  the  career  which  made  his  name  national  by  his  spoken 
argument  against  Writs  of  Assistance.  The  heroic  memory  of 
Joseph  Warren  is  almost  as  closely  associated  with  his  oration 
at  the  Old  South  Church  concerning  the  so-called  Boston 
Massacre  as  with  his  death  at  Bunker  Hill.  Samuel  Adams, 
too,  is  remembered  as  eloquent ;  and  John  Adams,  the  founder 
of  that  family  line  which  to  this  day  preserves  its  distinction, 
was  a  skilful  public  speaker.  There  is  something  widely 
characteristic,  indeed,  in  the  speech  which  Webster's  eulogy 
of  1826  attributed  to  this  first  New  England  President  of  the 
United  States.  The  famous  tc  Sink  or  swim,  live  or  die, 
survive  or  perish,"  closely  imitates  the  harangues  and  speeches 
of  classical  historians.  In  each  case  the  speeches  may  possi 
bly  have  been  based  on  some  tradition  of  what  was  actually 
said ;  in  each  case,  obeying  the  conventional  fashion  of  his 


243     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

time,  the  writer  —  Thucydides,  Livy,  or  Webster  —  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  a  hero  eloquent  words  which  are  really 
his  own.  I\i  each  case  these  words  not  only  characterise  the 
personages  who  are  feigned  to  have  uttered  them,  but  as 
elaborately  artificial  pieces  of  rhetoric  they  throw  light  as 
well  both  on  the  men  who  composed  them,  and  on  the  public 
for  which  they  were  composed.  In  more  than  one  way,  then, 
the  speech  which  Webster's  superb  fiction  of  1826  attributed 
to  the  John  Adams  of  half  a  century  before  illustrates  the 
New  England  oratory  of  which  Adams  was  one  of  the  first 
exponents  and  Webster  himself  the  greatest. 

For  between  the  time  of  Adams's  early  maturity  and  Web 
ster's  prime  there  was  a  flood  of  public  speaking  in  New 
England,  more  and  more  punctilious  and  finished  in  form. 
The  name  of  an  eminent  Federalist,  for  one  thing,  who  died 
in  1808  at  the  age  of  fifty  has  been  so  excellently  remembered 
that  a  Chief  Justice  of  Massachusetts,  in  a  eulogy  on  a  fellow- 
judge  who  died  little  more  than  twenty  years  ago,  declared 
with  no  intention  of  anti-climax  that  u  his  English  was  puri 
fied  by  constant  reading  of  the  greatest  models,  —  the  English 
Bible,  Shakspere,  Addison,  and  Fisher  Ames."  And  were 
oratory  pure  literature,  and  not  rather  related  to  the  func 
tions  of  the  pulpit  or  the  bar,  one  might  well  give  a  whole 
volume  to  the  American  oratory  of  the  century  which  followed 
the  Revolution.  In  a  study  like  ours,  however,  we  have  time 
only  for  a  glance  at  it ;  and  this  hasty  glance  shows  clearly 
that  its  most  eminent  exponent  in  New  England  was  Daniel 
Webster. 

Webster's  public  life  is  a  matter  of  familiar  history.  Born 
in  1782,  the  son  of  a  New  Hampshire  farmer,  he  graduated 
at  the  little  country  college  of  Dartmouth.  He  began  his 
legal  career  in  his  native  State;  but  Portsmouth,  the  chief 
city  of  New  Hampshire,  was  already  declining  in  importance, 
and  before  1820  Webster  removed  to  Boston.  At  that  time 
the  material  prosperity  of  New  England  was  well  under  way. 


THE   ORATORS  249 

Webster's  active  life  in  Massachusetts  coincided  with  the  full 
development  of  those  manufacturing  industries  on  which  the 
older  Boston  fortunes  are  still  generally  based.  At  the  head  of 
these  industries  and  of  other  similar  activities  was  that  class  of 
native  Massachusetts  gentlemen  whom  Stuart  painted.  Be 
fore  long  this  developed  politically  into  the  old  Whig  party, 
in  which  was  long  concentrated  the  political  energy  of  the 
educated  and  socially  eminent  people  who  for  a  good  while 
controlled  Massachusetts  politics.  Of  this  party  Webster 
soon  became  the  recognised  leader,  acquiring  such  power  as 
no  other  political  leader  of  New  England  has  known  before 
or  since. 

Not  the  least  remarkable  phase  of  this  extraordinary 
dominance  lies  in  the  fact  that  Webster  was  foreign  in  tem 
perament  to  the  social  class  of  which  he  thus  became  the 
acknowledged  chief.  The  Massachusetts  Whigs  were  Bos 
ton  gentlemen  who  embodied  the  general  traits  at  which  we 
have  glanced.  Webster  was  the  son  of  a  New  Hampshire 
countryman  ;  and  despite  the  formal  dignity  of  his  manners,  his 
character,  from  their  point  of  view,  left  something  to  be  de 
sired.  Undoubtedly  a  man  of  commanding  ability,  he  was 
with  equal  certainty  a  good  fellow,  robust  in  personal  habits, 
and  not  very  careful  of  his  minor  morals ;  you  could  generally 
trust  him  to  win  a  case,  and  not  to  pay  a  bill.  Yet  for  half 
a  lifetime  he  justly  maintained  personal  leadership  amid  the 
most  severely  moral  and  commercially  punctilious  aristocracy 
of  America.  In  view  of  this  fact  the  means  by  which  he 
attained  eminence  becomes  significant. 

For,  in  the  first  place,  as  an  advocate  at  the  bar,  in  the 
second  place,  as  a  representative  of  public  sentiment  on 
memorable  festal  occasions,  and  finally  as  the  most  influential 
of  American  Senators,  Webster's  means  of  asserting  himself 
remained  the  same.  He  had  an  unsurpassed  power  of  getting 
up  before  great  bodies  of  his  fellow-citizens  and  talking  to 
them  in  a  way  which  should  hold  their  attention,  influence 


250     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

their  convictions,  and  guide  their  conduct.  It  is  worth  our 
while,  then,  to  glance  at  two  or  three  passages  from  his 
speeches. 

There  is  no  more  familiar  example  of  his  occasional  oratory 
than  his  Apostrophe  to  the  survivors  of  the  battle  of  Bunker 
Hill,  which  occurs  in  an  oration  delivered  in  1825,  when  the 
cornerstone  of  the  Bunker  Hill  Monument  was  laid : 

"  Venerable  men  !  you  have  come  down  to  us  from  a  former  gener 
ation.  Heaven  has  bounteously  lengthened  out  your  lives,  that  you 
might  behold  this  joyous  day.  You  are  now  where  you  stood  fifty 
years  ago,  this  very  hour,  with  your  brothers  and  your  neighbours, 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  in  the  strife  for  your  country.  Behold,  how 
altered!  The  same  heavens  are  indeed  over  your  heads;  the  same 
ocean  rolls  at  your  feet ;  but  all  else  how  changed  !  You  hear  now 
no  roar  of  hostile  cannon,  you  see  no  mixed  volumes  of  smoke  and 
flame  arising  from  burning  Charlestown.  The  ground  strewed  with 
the  dead  and  the  dying ;  the  impetuous  charge  ;  the  steady  and  suc 
cessful  repulse  ;  the  loud  call  to  repeated  assault ;  the  summoning  of 
all  that  is  manly  to  repeated  resistance  ;  a  thousand  bosoms  freely  and 
fearlessly  bared  in  an  instant  to  whatever  of  terror  there  may  be  in 
war  or  death ;  —  all  these  you  have  witnessed,  but  you  witness  them  no 
more.  All  is  peace.  The  heights  of  yonder  metropolis,  its  towers 
and  roofs,  which  you  then  saw  filled  with  wives  and  children  and 
countrymen  in  distress  and  terror,  and  looking  with  unutterable  emo 
tions  for  the  issue  of  the  combat,  have  presented  you  to-day  with  the 
sight  of  its  whole  happy  population,  come  out  to  welcome  and  to  greet 
you  with  a  universal  jubilee.  Yonder  proud  ships,  by  a  felicity  of 
position  appropriately  lying  at  the  foot  of  this  mount,  and  seeming 
fondly  to  cling  around  it,  are  not  means  of  annoyance  to  you,  but  your 
country's  own  means  of  distinction  and  defence.  All  is  peace  ;  and 
God  has  granted  you  this  sight  of  your  country's  happiness,  ere  you 
slumber  in  the  grave.  He  has  allowed  you  to  behold  and  to  partake 
the  reward  of  your  patriotic  toils  ;  and  he  has  allowed  us,  your  sons 
and  countrymen,  to  meet  you  here,  and  in  the  name  of  the  present 
generation,  in  the  name  of  your  country,  in  the  name  of  liberty,  to 
thank  you  ! " 

However  impressive  you  may  find  such  work  as  this,  you  can 
hardly  avoid  feeling  it  to  be  elaborately  artificial ;  and  yet  its 
artificiality  has  a  ring  of  genuineness.  It  comes  very  near  bom 
bast,  but  it  is  not  quite  bombastic.  It  does  not  caricature  itself. 


THE   ORATORS  251 

Similar  traits  you  may  find  in  Webster's  legal  arguments, 
such  as  his  description  of  the  murder  of  Joseph  White  of 
Salem  :  — 

"  The  deed  was  executed  with  a  degree  of  self-possession  and 
steadiness  equal  to  the  wickedness  with  which  it  was  planned.  The 
circumstances  now  clearly  in  evidence  spread  out  the  whole  scene 
before  us.  Deep  sleep  had  fallen  on  the  destined  victim,  and  on  all 
beneath  his  roof.  A  healthful  old  man,  to  whom  sleep  was  sweet, 
the  first  sound  slumbers  of  the  night  held  him  in  their  soft  but  strong 
embrace.  The  assassin  enters,  through  the  window  already  prepared, 
into  an  unoccupied  apartment.  With  noiseless  foot  he  paces  the 
lonely  hall,  half-lighted  by  the  moon ;  he  winds  up  the  ascent  of 
the  stairs,  and  reaches  the  door  of  the  chamber.  Of  this,  he  moves 
the  lock,  by  soft  and  continued  pressure,  till  it  turns  on  its  hinges 
without  noise;  and  he  enters,  and  beholds  his  victim  before  him. 
The  room  is  uncommonly  open  to  the  admission  of  light.  The  face 
of  the  innocent  sleeper  is  turned  from  the  murderer,  and  the  beams 
of  the  moon,  resting  on  the  gray  locks  of  his  aged  temple,  show  him 
where  to  strike.  The  fatal  blow  is  given !  and  the  victim  passes 
without  a  struggle  or  a  motion,  from  the  repose  of  sleep  to  the  repose 
of  death  !  It  is  the  assassin's  purpose  to  make  sure  work;  and  he 
plies  the  dagger,  though  it  is  obvious  that  life  has  been  destroyed  by 
the  blow  of  the  bludgeon.  He  even  raises  the  aged  arm,  that  he  may 
not  fail  in  his  aim  at  the  heart,  and  replaces  it  again  over  the  wounds 
of  the  poniard !  To  finish  the  picture,  he  explores  the  wrist  for  the 
pulse !  He  feels  for  it,  and  ascertains  that  it  beats  no  longer  !  It  is 
accomplished.  The  deed  is  done.  He  retreats,  retraces  his  steps  to 
the  window,  passes  out  through  it  as  he  came  in,  and  escapes.  He 
has  done  the  murder.  No  eye  has  seen  him,  no  ear  has  heard  him. 
The  secret  is  his  own,  and  he  is  safe  !" 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  more  vivid  description  of  appal 
lingly  tragic  fact ;  and  the  speech  of  which  this  formed  a  part 
carried  a  Salem  jury  against  the  evidence  to  a  morally  just 
verdict.  As  one  looks  at  it,  however,  after  an  interval  of 
seventy  years,  one  feels  along  with  its  consummate  skill,  an 
artificiality  of  both  conception  and  phrase,  nowadays  as  for 
eign  to  us  as  a  totally  foreign  language.  The  words  "  blud 
geon  "  and  u  poniard,"  for  instance,  just  as  palpably  as  the 
slip  into  the  historical  present  tense,  instantly  betray  elaborate, 
though  spontaneous,  artifice. 


252     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Just  such  artificiality  and  power  combine  in  the  famous 
climax  of  Webster's  reply  to  Hayne,  delivered  in  that  same 
1830:  — 

"  I  have  not  allowed  myself,  sir,  to  look  beyond  the  Union,  to  see 
what  might  be  hidden  in  the  dark  recess  behind.  I  have  not  coolly 
weighed  the  chances  of  preserving  liberty  when  the  bonds  that  unite 
us  together  shall  be  broken  asunder.  I  have  not  accustomed  myself 
to  hang  over  the  precipice  of  disunion,  to  see  whether,  with  my  short 
sight,  I  can  fathom  the  depth  of  the  abyss  below ;  nor  could  I  regard 
him  as  a  safe  counsellor  in  the  affairs  of  this  government,  whose 
thoughts  should  be  mainly  bent  on  considering,  not  how  the  Union 
may  be  best  preserved,  but  how  tolerable  might  be  the  condition  of 
the  people  when  it  should  be  broken  up  and  destroyed.  While  the 
Union  lasts,  we  have  high,  exciting,  gratifying  prospects  spread  out 
before  us,  for  us  and  our  children.  Beyond  that  I  seek  not  to  pene 
trate  the  veil.  God  grant  that  in  my  day,  at  least,  the  curtain  may  not 
rise !  God  grant  that  on  my  vision  never  may  be  opened  what  lies 
behind  !  When  my  eyes  shall  be  turned  to  behold  for  the  last  time 
the  sun  in  heaven,  may  I  not  see  him  shining  on  the  broken  and  dis 
honoured  fragments  of  a  once  glorious  Union;  on  States  dissevered, 
discordant,  belligerent;  on  a  land  rent  with  civil  feuds,  or  drenched,  it 
may  be,  in  fraternal  blood!  Let  their  last  feeble  and  lingering  glance 
rather  behold  the  gorgeous  ensign  of  the  republic,  now  known  and 
honoured  throughout  the  earth,  still  full  high  advanced,  its  arms  and 
trophies  streaming  in  their  original  lustre,  not  a  stripe  erased  or  pol 
luted,  nor  a  single  star  obscured,  bearing  for  its  motto,  no  such  miser 
able  interrogatory  as  'what  is  all  this  worth?'  nor  those  other  words 
of  delusion  and  folly,  *  Liberty  first  and  Union  afterwards; '  but  every 
where,  spread  all  over  in  characters  of  living  light,  blazing  on  all  its 
ample  folds,  as  they  float  over  the  sea  and  over  the  land,  and  in  every 
wind  under  the  whole  heavens,  that  other  sentiment,  dear  to  every 
true  American  heart,  —  Liberty  and  Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and 
inseparable ! " 

It  was  such  oratory  as  this,  in  Congress,  in  the  courts,  and 
at  all  sorts  of  public  meetings  alike,  which  for  more  than 
thirty  years  sustained  Webster's  commanding  influence.  To 
call  it  artificial  is  perhaps  a  mistake.  The  man  spoke  and 
wrote  in  a  way  which  to  him,  as  well  as  to  the  public  of  his 
time,  seemed  the  only  fit  one  for  matters  of  such  dignity  as 
those  with  which  he  had  to  deal ;  and  he  wrote  and  spoke  with 


THE   ORATORS  253 

a  fervid  power  which  any  one  can  recognize.  All  the  same, 
his  style  is  certainly  more  analogous  to  Dr.  Johnson's  pub 
lished  prose  than  to  those  idiomatic  utterances  recorded  by 
Boswell  which  have  made  Johnson  immortal.  If  Webster's 
power  is  beyond  dispute,  so  is  its  essentially  histrionic  char 
acter.  There  used  to  be  a  saying  that  no  human  being  was 
ever  really  so  great  as  Daniel  Webster  always  looked  j  he 
had,  in  fact,  that  temperamental  tendency  to  pose  which  you 
generally  find  in  actors,  and  often  in  preachers.  And  this  he 
enforced,  in  a  manner  which  was  thoroughly  acceptable  to  the 
America  of  his  time,  by  an  extremely  elaborate  rhetoric  based 
partly  on  the  parliamentary  traditions  of  eighteenth  century 
England,  and  partly,  like  those  traditions  themselves,  on  the 
classical  oratory  of  Rome  and  Greece. 

Such  highly  developed  oratory  as  Webster's  is  a  kind  of 
thing  which  never  grows  into  existence  alone.  Like  Shakspere 
before  him,  he  was  only  the  most  eminent  member  of  a  school 
which  has  left  many  other  memories,  in  their  own  day  of 
almost  equal  distinction ;  and  the  fact  that  he  retained  so  many 
traces  of  his  far  from  eminent  New  Hampshire  origin  makes 
him  somewhat  less  typical  of  the  Boston  orators  of  his  time 
than  were  some  natives  of  Massachusetts. 

Of  these  none  was  more  distinguished  than  Edward  Everett. 
Born  in  1794,  the  son  of  a  minister,  but  not  sprung  from  a 
family  which  had  enjoyed  high  social  consideration  before  the 
Revolution,  he  took  his  degree  at  Harvard  in  1811,  and  two 
years  later  he  became  for  a  while  minister  of  the  Brattle  Street 
Church  in  Boston.  A  year  or  so  later,  having  been  appointed 
professor  of  Greek  at  Harvard,  he  went  abroad,  to  prepare 
himself  for  his  academic  duties,  and  was  among  the  earliest 
of  American  scholars  to  study  at  a  German  university.  The 
effect  which  he  produced  on  his  return  from  Europe  has  been 
vividly  described  by  Emerson  :  — 

"There  was  an  influence  on  the  young  people  from  the  genius  of 
Everett  which  was  almost  comparable  to  that  of  Pericles  in  Athens. 


254     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

He  had  an  inspiration  which  did  not  go  beyond  his  head,  but  which 
made  him  the  master  of  elegance.  If  any  of  my  readers  were  at  that 
period  in  Boston  or  Cambridge,  they  will  easily  remember  his  radiant 
beauty  of  person,  of  a  classic  style,  his  heavy  large  eye,  marble  lids, 
which  gave  the  impression  of  mass  which  the  slightness  of  his  form 
needed  ;  sculptured  lips  ;  a  voice  of  such  rich  tones,  such  precise  and 
perfect  utterance,  that,  although  slightly  nasal,  it  was  the  most  mellow 
and  beautiful  and  correct  of  all  the  instruments  of  the  time.  The 
word  that  he  spoke,  in  the  manner  in  which  he  spoke  it,  became  cur 
rent  and  classical  in  New  England.  He  had  a  great  talent  for  collect 
ing  facts,  and  for  bringing  those  he  had  to  bear  with  ingenious  felicity 
on  the  topic  of  the  moment.  Let  him  rise  to  speak  on  what  occasion 
soever,  a  fact  had  always  just  transpired  which  composed,  with  some 
other  fact  well  known  to  the  audience,  the  most  pregnant  and  happy 
coincidence.  ...  In  the  lecture-room,  he  abstained  from  all  ornament, 
and  pleased  himself  with  the  play  of  detailing  erudition  in  a  style  of 
perfect  simplicity.  In  the  pulpit  (for  he  was  then  a  clergyman)  he 
made  amends  to  himself  and  his  auditor  for  the  self-denial  of  the  pro 
fessor's  chair,  and,  with  an  infantine  simplicity  still,  of  manner,  he 
gave  the  reins  to  his  florid,  quaint,  and  affluent  fancy. 

"Then  was  exhibited  all  the  richness  of  a  rhetoric  which  we  have 
never  seen  rivalled  in  this  country.  Wonderful  how  memorable  were 
words  made  which  were  only  pleasing  pictures,  and  covered  no  new  or 
valid  thoughts.  He  abounded  in  sentences,  in  wit.  in  satire,  in  splen 
did  allusion,  in  quotation  impossible  to  forget,  in  daring  imagery,  in 
parable  and  even  in  a  sort  of  defying  experiment  of  his  own  wit  and 
skill  in  giving  an  oracular  weight  to  Hebrew  or  Rabbinical  words  :  .  .  . 
feats  which  no  man  could  better  accomplish,  such  was  his  self-com 
mand  and  the  security  of  his  manner.  All  his  speech  was  music,  and 
with  such  variety  and  invention  that  the  ear  was  never  tired.  This 
was  a  triumph  of  rhetoric.  It  was  not  the  intellectual  or  the  moral 
principles  which  he  had  to  teach.  It  was  not  thoughts.  But  his 
power  lay  in  the  magic  of  form ;  it  was  in  the  graces  of  manner  ;  in  a 
new  perception  of  Grecian  beauty,  to  which  he  had  opened  our  eyes. 
In  every  public  discourse  there  was  nothing  left  for  the  indulgence  of 
his  hearer,  no  marks  of  late  hours  and  anxious,  unfinished  study,  but 
the  goddess  of  grace  had  breathed  on  the  work  a  last  fragrancy  and 
glitter." 

If  this  sketch  of  Emerson's  gives  the  impression  that 
Everett  was  a  mere  rhetorician,  as  distinguished  from  a  man 
of  power,  the  facts  of  his  career  should  suffice  instantly  to 
correct  it.  Among  other  phases  of  his  later  activity,  he  was 


THE   ORATORS  255 

an  editor  of  the  "  North  American  Review  ;  "  for  ten  years  he 
was  a  member  of  Congress  ;  for  four  years  he  was  governor 
of  Massachusetts  ;  for  four  more  he  was  Minister  to  Eng 
land  ;  he  succeeded  Webster  as  Secretary  of  State  ;  he  was 
president  of  Harvard  College  ;  he  was  senator  from  Massa 
chusetts  ;  and  in  1860  he  was  nominated  for  the  vice-presidency 
of  the  United  States  by  the  party  which  bravely  tried  to  avert 
secession.  In  person  he  embodied  that  dignified  grace  which 
marked  the  Whig  gentry  of  Massachusetts ;  and  if  his  distinc 
tion  of  feeling  and  his  formality  of  manner  prevented  him  at 
once  from  popularity  and  from  unrestrained  fervour  of  utterance, 
no  man  of  his  time  has  been  remembered  with  more  admiration 
or  respect.  What  makes  Emerson's  sketch  noteworthy,  then, 
is  not  so  much  its  critical  acuteness  as  the  precision  with  which 
it  reminds  us  that  a  career  so  brilliant  and  useful  as  Everett's 
was  based  on  consummate  mastery  of  rhetoric. 

Everett's  published  works  consist  of  four  volumes,  entitled 
"  Orations  and  Speeches,"  beginning  with  an  address  before 
the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  of  Harvard  College  on  "The 
Circumstances  Favourable  to  the  Progress  of  Literature  in 
America,"  delivered  in  1824;  anc^  closing  with  a  brief  address 
at  Faneuil  Hall  in  aid  of  a  "  Subscription  to  Relieve  the  Suf 
fering  People  of  Savannah,"  delivered  on  the  9th  of  January, 
1865,  less  than  a  week  before  his  death.  Throughout  these 
four  volumes,  comprising  the  utterances  of  more  than  forty 
years,  every  paragraph  seems  a  studied,  masterly  work  of 
art.  Everett's  natural  feeling  was  warm  and  spontaneous ; 
but  he  had  acquired  and  he  unswervingly  maintained  that 
incessant  self-control  which  his  generation  held  among  the 
highest  ideals  of  conduct.  So  whatever  he  publicly  uttered, 
and  still  more  whatever  he  suffered  himself  to  print,  was  delib 
erately  considered  to  the  minutest  detail. 

His  familiar  description  of  the  voyage  of  the  Mayflower, 
from  his  oration  at  Plymouth  in  1824,  will  show  his  oratory  in 
its  earliest  stage  :  — 


256      THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

"  Methinks  I  see  it  now,  that  one  solitary,  adventurous  vessel,  the 
Mayflower  of  a  forlorn  hope,  freighted  with  the  prospects  of  a  future 
state,  and  bound  across  the  unknown  sea.  I  behold  it  pursuing,  with 
a  thousand  misgivings,  the  uncertain,  the  tedious  voyage.  Suns  rise 
and  set,  and  weeks  and  months  pass,  and  winter  surprises  them  on  the 
deep,  but  brings  them  not  the  sight  of  the  wished-for  shore.  I  see 
them  now,  scantily  provided  with  provisions,  crowded  almost  to  suffo 
cation  in  their  ill-stored  prison,  delayed  by  calms,  pursuing  a  circuitous 
route,  and  now,  driven  in  fury  before  the  raging  tempest,  in  their 
scarcely  seaworthy  vessel.  The  awful  voice  of  the  storm  howls 
through  the  rigging.  The  labouring  masts  seem  straining  from  their 
base  ;  the  dismal  sound  of  the  pumps  is  heard  ;  the  ship  leaps,  as  it 
were,  madly  from  billow  to  billow  ;  the  ocean  breaks,  and  settles  with 
ingulfing  floods  over  the  floating  deck,  and  beats  with  deadening 
weight  against  the  staggered  vessel.  I  see  them,  escaped  from  these 
perils,  pursuing  their  all  but  desperate  undertaking,  and  landed  at  last, 
after  a  five  months'  passage,  on  the  ice-clad  rocks  of  Plymouth,  weak 
and  exhausted  from  the  voyage,  poorly  armed,  scantily  provisioned, 
depending  on  the  charity  of  their  ship-master  for  a  draught  of  beer  on 
board,  drinking  nothing  but  water  on  shore,  without  shelter,  without 
means,  surrounded  by  hostile  tribes.  Shut  now  the  volume  of  history, 
and  tell  me  on  any  human  probability,  what  shall  be  the  fate  of  this 
handful  of  adventurers.  Tell  me,  man  of  military  science,  in  how 
many  months  were  they  all  swept  off  by  the  thirty  savage  tribes  enum 
erated  within  the  boundaries  of  New  England  ?  Tell  me,  politician, 
how  long  did  this  shadow  of  a  colony,  on  which  your  conventions  and 
treaties  had  not  smiled,  languish  on  this  distant  coast?  Students  of 
history,  compare  for  me  the  baffled  projects,  the  deserted  settlements, 
the  abandoned  adventures  of  other  times,  and  find  the  parallel  of  this. 
Was  it  the  winter's  storm,  beating  upon  the  houseless  heads  of  women 
and  children  ?  was  it  hard  labour  and  spare  meals  ?  was  it  disease  ? 
was  it  the  tomahawk  ?  was  it  the  deep  malady  of  a  blighted  hope,  a 
ruined  enterprise,  and  a  broken  heart,  aching  in  its  last  moments  at 
the  recollection  of  the  loved  and  left,  beyond  the  sea  ?  —  was  it  some 
or  all  of  these  united  that  hurried  this  forsaken  company  to  their  mel 
ancholy  fate  ?  And  is  it  possible  that  neither  of  these  causes,  that  not 
all  combined,  were  able  to  blast  this  bud  of  hope  ?  Is  it  possible  that 
from  a  beginning  so  feeble,  so  frail,  so  worthy,  not  so  much  of  admira 
tion  as  of  pity,  there  have  gone  forth  a  progress  so  steady,  a  growth  so 
wonderful,  a  reality  so  important,  a  promise  yet  to  be  fulfilled  so 
glorious  ?  " 

The  close  of  his  address  at  the  inauguration  of  the  Union 
Club  in  Boston,  delivered  on  the  9th  of  April,  1863,  in  the 
midst  of  the  Civil  War,  typifies  his  eloquence  at  the  end :  — 


THE   ORATORS 


257 


"  The  cause  in  which  we  are  engaged  is  the  cause  of  the  Constitu 
tion  and  the  Law,  of  civilisation  and  freedom,  of  man  and  of  God. 
Let  us  engage  in  it  with  a  steadiness  and  a  fortitude,  a  courage  and  a 
zeal,  a  patience  and  a  resolution,  a  hope  and  a  cheer,  worthy  of  the 
fathers  from  whom  we  are  descended,  of  the  country  we  defend,  and 
of  the  privileges  we  inherit.  There  is  a  call  and  a  duty,  a  work  and  a 
place,  for  all ;  —  for  man  and  for  woman,  for  rich  and  for  poor,  for 
old  and  for  young,  for  the  stout-hearted  and  strong-handed,  for  all  who 
enjoy  and  all  who  deserve  to  enjoy  the  priceless  blessings  at  stake. 
Let  the  venerable  forms  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  the  majestic  images 
of  our  Revolutionary  sires,  and  of  the  sages  that  gave  us  this  glorious 
Union ;  let  the  anxious  expectations  of  the  Friends  of  Liberty  abroad, 
awakened  at  last  to  the  true  cause  and  the  great  issues  of  this  contest; 
let  the  hardships  and  perils  of  our  brethren  in  the  field  and  the  fresh- 
made  graves  of  the  dear  ones  who  have  fallen ;  let  every  memory  of 
the  past  and  every  hope  of  the  future,  every  thought  and  every  feeling, 
that  can  nerve  the  arm,  or  fire  the  heart,  or  elevate  and  purify  the  soul 
of  a  patriot,  —  rouse  and  guide  and  cheer  and  inspire  us  to  do,  and,  if 
need  be,  to  die,  for  our  Country  !  " 

Between  these  two  extracts  there  is  certainly  a  contrast ; 
but  it  is  rather  such  a  contrast  as  exists  between  the  history  of 
the  very  different  times  in  which  they  were  delivered  than  a 
temperamental  one.  The  earlier,  of  course,  is  more  conven 
tional,  more  elaborate  and  more  florid  ;  the  latter,  spoken  at  a 
moment  of  gravest  national  danger,  at  a  moment  too  when 
the  speaker  had  attained  his  full  maturity,  is  more  compact, 
more  fervid,  more  stirring.  But  both  alike  reveal  the  consum 
mate  skill  of  a  deliberate  master  of  the  art  of  oratory. 

The  eloquence  and  the  rhetorical  skill  of  Webster  and  of 
Everett  were  the  more  admired  in  their  own  day  for  the  reason 
that  they  were  exercised  in  behalf  of  those  political  principles 
which  then  commanded  the  support  of  all  conservative  people 
in  Massachusetts.  So  too  was  the  eloquence  of  many  other 
men,  each  of  whom  may  fairly  be  held  a  master  of  the  art  of 
which  Everett  and  Webster  were  the  most  eminent  exponents. 
Even  so  cursory  a  study  as  ours  may  not  neglect  the  name  of 
Rufus  Choate,  like  Webster  a  graduate  of  Dartmouth,  like 
Everett  a  lifelong  reader  of  the  classics,  and  for  years  not 

17 


258     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

only  eminent  in  public  life,  but  acknowledged  to  be  the  most 
powerful  advocate  at  the  New  England  bar.  A  little  later 
than  the  prime  of  these  men  there  arose  in  Boston  another 
generation  of  orators,  differing  from  their  predecessors  both  in 
principle  and  to  some  degree  in  method,  who  used  their  great 
powers  for  purposes  which  impressed  conservative  people  as 
dangerously  demagogic.  Of  these  the  most  eminent  were 
Wendell  Phillips,  Theodore  Parker,  and  Charles  Sumner.  On 
all  three  we  shall  touch  later.  But  we  may  hardly  again  have 
occasion  to  mention  an  eminent  citizen  of  the  elder  type  who 
survived  until  1894,  and  preserved  to  the  end  the  traditions  of 
that  great  school  of  formal  oratory  of  which  he  was  the  last 
survivor,  —  Mr.  Robert  Charles  Winthrop. 

With  Mr.  Winthrop,  one  may  say,  the  oratory  of  New 
England  expired.  And  now,  as  one  considers  its  century  and 
more  of  history,  one  discerns  more  and  more  clearly  why  the 
period  in  which  it  reached  its  height  may  best  be  understood 
when  we  call  it  a  period  of  Renaissance.  Almost  from  the 
time  of  the  Revolution,  isolated  New  England,  like  the  rest 
of  America,  was  awakening  to  a  new  sense  of  national  con 
sciousness  ;  so  the  society  of  New  England,  traditionally  one 
which  venerated  its  leaders,  looked  to  the  men  whom  circum 
stances  brought  prominently  forward  for  indubitable  assertion 
of  dignity  in  our  national  character.  The  professional  cir 
cumstances  which  brought  men  forward  were  generally  those 
of  the  pulpit  or  the  bar ;  clergymen  and  lawyers  accordingly 
found  that  they  could  no  longer  maintain  their  eminence  by 
merely  treading  in  the  footsteps  of  their  predecessors.  Trained 
in  our  old  Yankee  colleges  at  a  time  when  such  education 
meant  a  little  mathematics  and  a  tolerable  reading  knowledge 
of  the  classics,  these  men,  who  felt  themselves  called  upon 
admirably  to  express  our  new  nationality,  turned  instinctively 
to  that  mode  of  expression  which  in  crude  form  had  long  been 
characteristic  of  their  country.  In  their  impulsive  desire  to 
give  this  a  new  vitality,  they  instinctively  began  to  emulate 


THE   ORATORS  259 

first  the  formal  oratory  of  England,  which  had  reached  its 
acme  in  the  preceding  century ;  and  then,  perhaps  more  con 
sciously,  they  strove  to  saturate  themselves  with  the  spirit  of 
those  immemorial  masterpieces  of  oratory  which  helpr  to 
immortalise  the  literatures  of  Rome  and  of  Greece. 

On  general  principles,  the  world  might  have  expected 
America  to  produce  public  utterances  of  a  crudely  passionate 
kind,  marked  rather  by  difference  from  what  had  gone  before 
than  by  respect  for  traditional  models.  Instead,  without  a 
touch  of  affectation,  our  orators,  obeying  the  genuine  impulse 
of  their  nature,  exerted  their  most  strenuous  energy  in  surpris 
ingly  successful  efforts  to  emulate  the  achievements  of  an 
extremely  elaborate  art  which  had  attained  final  excellence  in 
the  days  of  Cicero  and  Demosthenes.  The  oratorical  models 
of  Greece  and  of  Rome  they  imitated  in  just  such  spirit  as 
that  in  which  the  masterpieces  of  antique  plastic  art  were 
imitated  by  fifteenth-century  Italy.  Apart  from  its  political 
significance,  as  embodying  principles  which  controlled  the 
American  history  of  their  time,  their  work  is  significant  in  our 
study  as  proving  how  spontaneously  the  awakening  national 
consciousness  of  New  England  strove  to  prove  our  country 
civilised  by  conscientious  obedience  to  eldest  civilised 
tradition. 


Ill 

THE    NEW    ENGLAND    SCHOLARS    AND    HISTORIANS 

SUCH  high  development  of  mental  activity  as  was  indicated  by 
the  renascent  oratory  of  New  England  is  never  solitary.  As 
Emerson's  memories  of  Everett  implied,  something  similar 
appeared  at  the  same  period  in  the  professional  scholarship  of 
the  region.  From  the  beginning,  the  centre  of  learning  there 
had  been  Harvard  College,  founded  to  perpetuate  a  learned 
ministry.  This  it  did  throughout  its  seventeenth-century  career ; 
and  in  the  eighteenth  century  it  also  had  the  distinction  of 
educating  many  lawyers  and  statesmen  who  became  eminent 
at  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  Thomas  Hutchinson  was  a 
Harvard  man,  and  so  were  almost  all  the  leading  Boston 
Tories,  of  whom  he  is  the  best  remembered.  So,  too,  were 
James  Otis,  and  Joseph  Warren,  and  the  Adamses,  and  almost 
every  Bostonian  who  attained  distinction  on  the  revolutionary 
side.  Up  to  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  how 
ever,  Harvard  College  remained  little  more  than  a  boys'  school. 
It  received  pupils  very  young ;  it  gave  them  a  fair  training  in 
Latin  and  Greek,  a  little  mathematics,  and  a  touch  of  theology 
if  they  so  inclined;  and  then  it  sent  them  forth  to  the 
careers  of  mature  life.  It  contented  itself,  in  brief,  with  some 
what  languidly  preserving  the  tradition  of  academic  training 
planted  in  the  days  of  Charles  I. ;  and  this  it  held,  in  rather 
mediaeval  spirit,  to  be  chiefly  valuable  as  the  handmaiden  of 
theology,  and  later  of  law  too.  One  principal  function  of  a 
true  university  —  that  of  acquiring  and  publishing  fresh 
knowledge  —  it  had  not  attempted. 

At  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  indeed,  learning  at 
Harvard  was  probably  inferior  to  that  which  had  existed  there  a 


SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  261 

century  before.  In  1800,  Latin  seems  to  have  been  far  less 
familiar  to  either  teachers  or  students  than  it  was  to  those  who 
taught  and  studied  under  the  presidency  of  Increase  Mather. 
Until  well  into  the  nineteenth  century,  too,  Harvard  appeared 
less  and  less  vital.  In  the  surrounding  air,  however,  a  new 
and  fresh  spirit  of  learning  declared  itself,  and  the  leaders  of 
this,  as  well  as  the  followers,  were  generally  either  Harvard  men 
or  men  who  in  mature  life  were  closely  allied  with  our  oldest 
college.  The  celebrated  Count  Rumford,  for  one,  a  Yankee 
country  boy,  began  his  regular  study  of  science  by  attending 
the  lectures  of  Professor  John  Winthrop  of  Harvard,  before 
the  Revolution ;  and  in  spite  of  his  permanent  departure  from 
his  native  country,  he  retained  a  keen  interest  in  New  Eng 
land.  In  1780  he  had  something  to  do  with  the  founding 
in  Boston  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences, 
which,  with  the  exception  of  Franklin's  Philosophical  Society 
in  Philadelphia,  is  the  oldest  learned  society  in  America.  For 
more  than  a  century  the  American  Academy  has  maintained, 
in  its  proceedings  and  its  publications,  a  standard  of  learning 
recognised  as  excellent  all  over  the  world.  Nor  was  it  long 
alone  in  Boston.  In  1791,  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  was  founded  for  the  purpose  of  collecting,  preserving, 
and  publishing  historical  matter,  chiefly  relating  to  its  ancestral 
Commonwealth.  Like  the  American  Academy,  this  society 
still  flourishes,  and  during  its  century  of  existence  it  has 
published  a  considerable  amount  of  material,  admirably  set 
forth  and  often  of  more  than  local  importance. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  too,  certain 
young  gentlemen  of  Boston,  mostly  graduates  of  Harvard  and 
chiefly  members  of  the  learned  professions,  formed  themselves 
into  an  Anthology  Club,  with  the  intention  of  conducting 
a  literary  and  scholarly  ^review.  Their  Anthology  did  not 
last  long;  but  their  Club  developed  on  the  one  hand  into 
the  Boston  Athenaeum,  which  in  ninety  years  has  grown  into 
a  remarkably  well  selected  library  of  some  two  hundred  tho\i- 


262     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

sand  volumes;  and  in  1815,  on  the  other  hand,  into  that 
periodical  which  long  remained  the  serious  vehicle  of  scholarly 
New  England  thought,  —  the  "North  American  Review." 
This  was  modelled  on  the  great  British  Reviews,  —  the 
"  Edinburgh  "  and  the  "  Quarterly ; "  and  under  the  guid 
ance  of  such  men  as  William  Tudor,  Edward  Tyrrell  Chan- 
ning,  Jared  Sparks,  James  Russell  Lowell,  Charles  Eliot 
Norton,  and  the  late  Dr.  Andrew  Preston  Peabody,  it  main 
tained  its  dignity  for  more  than  fifty  years.  The  present 
"  North  American  Review,"  which  has  passed  by  purchase 
into  different  control,  is,  however  admirable,  entirely  changed 
in  character. 

Though  the  American  Academy,  the  Massachusetts  Histori 
cal  Society,  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  and  the  old  "  North 
American  Review  "  may  hardly  be  taken  as  comprehensive  of 
the  new  learning  which  was  springing  into  life  among  Boston 
men  bred  at  Harvard,  they  are  typical  of  it.  In  no  aspect 
are  they  more  so  than  in  the  fact  that  none  of  them  was 
indigenous;  all  alike  were  successful  efforts  to  imitate  in  our 
independent  New  England  such  learned  institutions  as  were 
among  the  most  salient  evidences  of  civilisation  in  Europe. 
What  they  stand  for  —  the  real  motive  which  was  in  the  air 
—  was  an  awakening  of  American  consciousness  to  the  fact 
that  serious  contemporary  standards  existed  in  other  countries 
than  our  own;  and  that  our  claim  to  respect  as  a  civilised 
community  could  no  longer  be  maintained  by  the  mere  pre 
servation  of  a  respectable  classical  school  for  boys.  Our  first 
outbreak  of  the  spirit  of  learning,  indeed,  was  even  more 
imitative  than  the  contemporary  literature  which  sprang  up  in 
New  York,  or  than  the  oratory  which  in  the  same  years  so 
elaborately  developed  itself  in  Massachusetts. 

It  was  not  until  a  little  later  that  the  scholarly  impulses  of 
New  England  produced  either  persons  or  works  of  literary 
distinction  ;  but  the  form  which  the  characteristic  literature  of 
this  scholarship  was  to  take  had  already  been  indicated  both  by 


SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  263 

the  early  literary  activities  of  this  part  of  the  country  and  by 
the  nature  of  our  most  distinguished  learned  society.  From 
the  earliest  period  of  Massachusetts,  as  we  have  seen,  there 
was,  along  with  theological  writing,  a  considerable  body  of 
publications  which  may  be  roughly  classified  as  historical. 
The  "  Magnalia  "  of  Cotton  Mather,  for  instance,  the  most 
typical  literary  production  of  seventeenth-century  America,  was 
almost  as  historical  in  impulse  as  it  was  theological.  Earlier 
still,  the  most  permanent  literary  monument  of  the  Plymouth 
colony  was  Bradford's  manuscript  "  History  ;  "  and  such  other 
manuscripts  as  Winthrop's  "  History  "  and  SewalPs  "  Diary  " 
show  how  deeply  rooted  in  the  colony  of  Massachusetts  too 
was  a  lasting  fondness  for  historical  record.  Other  than  local 
history,  indeed,  seems  to  have  interested  the  elder  Yankees 
chiefly  as  it  bore  on  the  origins  and  development  of  New 
England.  A  comical  example  of  this  fact  is  to  be  found  in 
the  "Chronological  History  of  New  England  in  the  Form  of 
Annals,"  published  in  1736,  by  the  Reverend  Thomas  Prince, 
minister  of  the  Old  South  Church.  Prince  had  unrivalled  op 
portunities  for  collecting  and  preserving  the  facts  of  our  first 
century ;  but,  having  thought  proper  to  begin  his  work  by 
"  an  introduction,  containing  a  brief  Epitome  of  the  most 
remarkable  Transactions  and  Events  ABROAD,  from  the 
CREATION,"  he  had  the  misfortune  to  die  before  he  had 
brought  the  chronology  of  New  England  itself  to  a  later  period 
than  1630.  A  more  philosophical  work  than  Prince's  was 
that  "  History  of  Massachusetts "  by  Thomas  Hutchinson, 
which  may  perhaps  be  called  the  most  respectable  American 
book  before  the  Revolution.  From  the  foundation  of  the 
colony,  in  short,  New  England  men  had  always  felt  strong 
interest  in  local  affairs  and  traditions  ;  and  this  had  resulted 
in  a  general  habit  of  collecting  and  sometimes  of  publishing 
accounts  of  what  had  happened  in  their  native  regions. 

The   temper  in  question  is  still   familiar  to  any  one  who 
knows  with  what  ardour  native  Yankees  abandon  themselves 


264     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

to  the  delights  of  genealogical  research.  Throughout  the 
nineteenth  century  it  has  borne  fruit  in  those  innumerable 
town  histories  which  make  the  local  records  of  New  England 
so  minutely  accessible  to  all  who  have  patience  to  plod  through 
innumerable  volumes  of  trivial  detail.  It  may  fairly  be 
regarded  as  the  basis  in  New  England  character  of  the  most 
considerable  scholarly  expression  which  New  England  de 
veloped  during  its  period  of  Renaissance.  For  during  the 
nineteenth  century  there  appeared  in  Boston  a  group  of  his 
torians  whose  work  became  widely  and  justly  celebrated. 

The  first  of  these  who  occurs  to  one,  although  he  made 
a  deeper  impression  on  the  intellectual  life  of  Boston  than 
almost  anybody  else,  is  hardly  remembered  as  of  high  literary 
importance.  This  was  George  Ticknor,  who  was  born  in 
1791,  the  only  son  of  a  prosperous  but  not  eminent  man  of 
business.  He  was  sent  to  Dartmouth  College,  and  after 
graduation  prepared  himself  for  the  practice  of  law  ;  but  find 
ing  this  not  congenial,  and  having  in  prospect  fortune  enough 
to  maintain  himself  respectably  without  a  profession,  he  de 
termined  to  devote  himself  to  pure  scholarship.  In  1815  he 
accordingly  went  abroad  with  letters  of  introduction  which 
combined  with  his  exceptional  social  qualities  to  give  him  dur 
ing  the  next  four  years  access  to  the  most  distinguished  and 
interesting  society  in  almost  every  European  country.  A 
portion  of  his  stay  abroad,  which  he  devoted  to  serious  study, 
he  passed  at  the  University  of  Gottingen,  where  Edward 
Everett  came  in  the  same  year,  1815.  Together  these  were 
the  first  of  that  distinguished  and  continuous  line  of  American 
scholars  who  have  supplemented  their  native  education  by 
enthusiastic  devotion  to  German  learning.  In  1819,  having 
returned  to  America,  Ticknor  became  the  first  Smith  Professor 
of  the  French  and  Spanish  languages  and  Belles  Lettres  at 
Harvard  College ;  Everett  at  the  same  time  began  his  lectures 
there  as  professor  of  Greek.  Together  they  stood  for  a  new 
principle  in  our  old  college,  —  that  instructors  ought  not  only 


SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  265 

to  assure  themselves  that  students  have  learned,  but  actually  to 
teach.  Everett  relinquished  his  professorship  in  1824,  be 
taking  himself  to  that  more  public  career  which  is  better 
remembered.  Ticknor,  the  first  Harvard  professor  of  modern 
languages,  retained  his  chair  until  1835  ;  and  during  this  time 
he  strenuously  attempted  to  enlarge  the  office  of  Harvard  from 
that  of  a  respectable  high  school  to  that  of  a  true  university. 
At  that  period,  however,  hardly  any  other  New  England 
scholars  had  had  personal  experience  of  foreign  learning ;  and 
time  was  not  ripe  for  the  changes  which  Ticknor  so  ardently 
advocated.  For  a  while  his  efforts  bade  fair  to  succeed ;  re 
action  followed ;  but  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the 
germs  of  those  modern  phases  of  learning  which  have  dis 
tinguished  Harvard  College  during  the  last  thirty  years,  are 
discernible  in  the  plans  which  George  Ticknor  cherished 
thirty  years  before. 

Besides  this  service  to  professional  learning,  Ticknor,  in 
later  life,  had  more  than  any  one  else  to  do  with  the  establish 
ment  of  that  great  engine  of  popular  education  which  for 
some  time  distinguished  Boston  from  other  American  cities, — 
the  Public  Library.  Ticknor's  private  library  was  in  its 
day  among  the  largest  and  best  selected  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic  ;  and  his  enthusiasm  in  the  cause  of  learning  in 
duced  him  to  lend  his  books  freely  to  any  respectable  persons 
who  satisfied  him  that  they  really  wanted  to  use  them.  His 
book-plate,  inscribed  simply  with  his  name  and  the  words 
Suum  Culque,  pleasantly  records  this  admirable  generosity, 
which  is  said  to  have  resulted  in  no  considerable  loss.  This 
experience,  persisting  through  the  renascent  period  of  New 
England,  convinced  him  that  if  he  could  bring  the  American 
public  into  free  contact  with  good  literature,  the  general  taste 
for  good  reading  would  increase,  and  the  general  intelligence 
and  consequent  civilisation  would  improve,  in  accordance  with 
the  aspirations  of  human  nature  toward  what  is  best.  The 
idea  of  a  great  public  library,  then,  grew  in  his  mind ;  and  in 


266     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

1852  he  was  an  eager  leader  in  the  movement  which  estab 
lished  in  Boston  the  first  and  best  public  circulating  library 
of  America. 

As  the  first  learned  professor  of  modern  languages  in  an 
American  university,  as  the  first  exponent  in  our  university 
life  of  continental  scholarship,  as  the  earliest  of  Americans  to 
attempt  the  development  of  an  American  college  into  a  modern 
university,  and  finally  as  the  chief  founder  of  the  chief  public 
library  in  the  United  States,  Ticknor's  claims  upon  popular 
memory  are  remarkable.  What  is  more,  those  who  knew 
him  well  felt  for  him  a  strong  personal  attachment ;  and  it  is 
probable  that  no  scholar  or  man  of  letters  was  ever  more 
generous  in  aiding  and  encouraging  whomever  he  found  eager 
in  learning  or  letters.  At  least  in  his  later  years,  however, 
Ticknor's  manners  did  not  impress  the  public  as  engaging. 
His  dignity  seemed  forbidding;  his  tongue  was  certainly 
sharp ;  to  people  who  did  not  attract  him  his  address  was 
hardly  sympathetic  ;  and  his  social  habits,  confirmed  by  almost 
lifelong  intimacy  with  good  European  society,  were  a  shade 
too  exclusive  for  the  growingly  democratic  taste  about  him. 
Yet  it  is  hard  to  overestimate  the  difference  which  Ticknor's 
personal  presence  made  in  the  intellectual  history  of  New 
England,  or  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  which  sprang  from  his 
generous  impulse. 

If  Ticknor's  chief  labours,  however,  took  other  than  literary 
form,  Ticknor  would  probably  have  regarded  as  his  principal 
claim  to  recognition  the  "  History  of  Spanish  Literature," 
which  he  published  in  1849.  From  the  time  of  his  first 
journey  abroad  he  had  been  attracted  to  Spanish  matters ;  his 
professorship  at  Harvard,  too,  was  partly  devoted  by  its  very 
terms  to  Spanish  literature ;  and  incidentally  he  collected,  and 
bequeathed  to  the  Public  Library  of  Boston,  a  Spanish  library, 
said  to  be  the  most  complete  outside  of  Spain  itself.  It  was 
not  until  thirty  years  after  he  began  the  work  of  the  Smith 
professorship  that  he  published  his  history.  Fifty  years  later, 


SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  267 

this  deeply  scholarly  book,  which  involved  untiring  investiga 
tion  of  the  best  German  type,  remains  authoritative  ;  and  it 
was  perhaps  the  first  American  book  to  establish  throughout 
the  learned  world  the  position  of  any  American  scholar.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  not  interesting.  Ticknor' s  mind  was 
rather  acquisitive  and  retentive  than  creative.  His  work  is 
that  of  a  thoroughly  trained  scholar  ;  of  a  man,  too,  so  sin 
cerely  devoted  to  literature  that,  as  we  have  seen,  his  services 
to  literary  culture  in  America  can  hardly  be  overestimated; 
of  a  man,  furthermore,  whose  letters  and  journals  show  him, 
though  deficient  in  humour,  to  have  had  at  command  an 
agreeable  and  fluent  every-day  style.  When  all  is  said,  how 
ever,  the  "  History  of  Spanish  Literature,"  taken  by  itself,  is 
heavily  respectable  reading.  A  more  winning  example  of 
Ticknor's  literary  power  is  the  life  of  his  friend  and  contem 
porary,  Prescott,  which  he  wrote  partly  at  the  instance  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  shortly  after  Prescott's 
death.  Ticknor  himself  died  at  the  age  of  eighty  in  1871. 

About  the  time  when  Ticknor  began  his  teaching  in  the 
Smith  professorship  at  Harvard,  a  subsequently  famous  dec 
laration  of  the  Unitarian  faith  was  made  in  the  sermon 
preached  at  Baltimore  by  William  Ellery  Channing,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  ordination  to  the  Unitarian  ministry  of  a  man 
no  longer  in  his  first  youth,  Jared  Sparks.  Sparks's  min 
isterial  career  was  not  very  long.  In  1824  ne  became  an 
editor  of  the  "  North  American  Review,"  and  for  the  rest  of 
his  life  he  remained  in  New  England.  From  1839  to  1849 
he  was  professor  of  history  at  Harvard;  from  1849  to  1853 
he  was  President  of  the  College  ;  and  after  his  resignation 
he  continued  resident  in  Cambridge  until  his  death,  in  1866. 

Sparks  left  behind  him  no  original  writings  which  have  sur 
vived  ;  but  his  special  services  to  historical  study  in  New 
England  were  almost  as  great  as  were  those  of  Ticknor  to 
the  study  of  modern  languages  and  to  the  modern  spirit  in 
learning.  As  early  as^  1829  he  began  to  issue  an  elaborate 


268     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

collection  of  the  diplomatic  correspondence  of  the  American 
Revolution.  Between  1834  and  1840  he  collected  and  issued 
the  first  authoritative  editions  of  the  writings  of  Washington 
and  of  Franklin;  and  although  his  editorial  principles  were 
not  in  all  respects  such  as  have  been  sanctioned  by  later 
scholarship,  he  was  scrupulously  exact  in  statements  of  fact 
and  untiring  in  methodical  accumulation  of  material.  In 
1834  appeared  the  first  volume  of  his  "Library  of  American 
Biography,"  the  publication  of  which  continued  until  1847. 
In  each  volume  are  the  lives  of  three  or  four  eminent  Ameri 
cans,  generally  written  by  enthusiastic  young  scholars,  but  all 
subjected  to  the  editorial  supervision  of  Sparks,  who  thus 
brought  into  being  a  still  valuable  biographical  dictionary. 

Such  work  as  this  clearly  evinces  wide  and  enthusiastic 
interest  in  the  study  and  writing  of  history.  Though  not 
educated  in  Germany,  Sparks,  with  his  untiring  energy  in 
the  accumulation  and  arrangement  of  material,  and  his  un 
usual  power  of  making  other  people  work  systematically, 
was  very  like  a  sound  German  scholar.  He  really  established 
a  large  historical  factory ;  with  skilled  help,  he  collected  all 
the  raw  material  he  could  find ;  and  he  turned  out  some 
thing  like  a  finished  article  in  lengths  to  suit,  —  somewhat 
as  his  commercial  contemporaries  spun  excellent  cotton.  In 
a  mechanical  way  his  work  was  admirable ;  he  really  ad 
vanced  New  England  scholarship ;  and  he  may  be  said  to 
have  founded  that  school  of  earnest  historical  study  which  to 
this  day  remains  so  energetic  and  distinguished  at  the  college 
of  which  he  was  a  faithful  professor  and  president. 

If  neither  Ticknor  nor  Sparks  contributed  to  permanent 
literature,  the  names  of  both  are  closely  connected  with  that 
of  the  first  man  in  New  England  who  wrote  history  in  a  spirit 
as  literary  as  that  of  Gibbon  or  Macaulay.  This  is  the  per 
sonal  friend  whose  biography  by  Ticknor  is  the  most  sym 
pathetic  work  which  Ticknor  has  left  us,  —  William  Hickling 
Prescott.  In  the  first  volume  of  Sparks's  "  Library  of  Amer- 


SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  269 

ican  Biography,"  published  in  1834,  is  Prescott's  "Life  of 
Charles  Brockden  Brown,"  written  in  the  somewhat  florid 
style  then  fashionable.  At  the  time  when  this  was  published, 
Prescott  was  known  as  a  gentleman  of  scholarly  temper  and 
comfortable  fortune,  approaching  the  age  of  forty,  whose  life 
had  probably  been  ruined  by  an  accident  at  college.  The 
students  of  his  day  had  been  boisterous  in  table  manners; 
and  on  one  occasion  somebody  thoughtlessly  threw  a  piece 
of  bread  across  the  dining-room,  striking  Prescott  in  the  eye. 
This  resulted  in  something  so  near  permanent  blindness 
that  he  could  never  read  again,  and  that  he  could  write  only 
with  the  aid  of  a  machine  composed  of  parallel  wires  by 
which  he  painfully  guided  his  pencil. 

In  spite  of  these  obstacles  he  quietly  set  to  work  on  his 
history  of  "Ferdinand  and  Isabella."  As  the  book  approached 
completion,  he  was  beset  with  doubts  of  its  merit.  Unable 
to  use  his  eyes,  he  had  been  compelled  to  collect  his  material 
through  the  aid  of  readers,  and  then  to  compose  it  in  his 
head  before  proceeding  to  the  process  of  dictation ;  and  he 
was  so  far  from  satisfied  with  the  result  of  his  labours  that 
he  hesitated  about  publication.  An  anecdote  which  Ticknor 
relates  of  this  moment  is  characteristic  of  the  man  and  of 
his  time.  "  He  consulted  his  father,  as  he  always  did  when 
he  doubted  in  relation  to  matters  of  consequence.  His 
father  not  only  advised  the  publication,  but  told  him  that  4  the 
man  who  writes  a  book  which  he  is  afraid  to  publish  is  a 
coward.'  '  So  in  1837  "  Ferdinand  and  Isabella"  was  pub 
lished  ;  and  at  last  New  England  had  produced  a  permanent 
historian.  The  u  Conquest  of  Mexico"  followed  in  1843, 
the  "Conquest  of  Peru"  in  1847,  anc^  Prescott  was  still 
engaged  on  his  "Life  of  Philip  II."  when,  in  1859,  apoplexy 
overtook  him  at  the  age  of  sixty-three. 

Since  Prescott's  time,  the  tendency  has  been  more  and  more 
to  regard  history  as  a  matter  rather  of  science  than  of  litera 
ture  ;  the  fashion  of  style,  too,  has  greatly  changed  from  that 


2/0     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

which  prevailed  when  New  England  found  the  model  of 
rhetorical  excellence  in  its  formal  oratory.  Prescott's  work, 
then,  is  often  mentioned  as  rather  romantic  than  scholarly. 
In  this  view  there  is  some  justice.  The  scholarship  of  his 
day  had  not  collected  anything  like  the  material  now  at  the 
disposal  of  students;  and  Prescott's  infirmity  of  sight  could 
not  help  limiting  the  range  of  his  investigation.  His  style, 
too,  always  clear  and  readable,  and  often  vivid,  is  somewhat 
florid  and  generally  coloured  by  what  seems  a  conviction  that 
historical  writers  should  maintain  the  dignity  of  history.  For 
all  this,  his  works  so  admirably  combine  substantial  truth  with 
literary  spirit  that  they  are  more  useful  than  many  which  are 
respected  as  more  authoritative.  What  he  tells  us  is  the  re 
sult  of  thoughtful  study  ;  and  he  tells  it  in  a  manner  so  clear, 
and  for  all  its  formality  so  agreeable,  that  when  you  have  read 
one  of  his  chapters  you  remember  without  effort  what  it  is 
about.  With  a  spirit  as  modern  as  George  Ticknor's,  and 
with  much  of  the  systematic  scholarship  of  Jared  Sparks,  Pres- 
cott  combined  unusual  literary  power. 

For  our  purposes,  however,  the  most  notable  phase  of  his 
work  is  to  be  found  in  the  subjects  to  which  he  turned.  At 
first  his  aspirations  to  historical  writing  took  a  general  form. 
At  last,  after  hesitation  whether  to  write  of  antiquity,  of  Italy, 
or  of  what  not,  he  was  most  attracted  by  the  same  romantic 
Spain  which  a  few  years  before  had  captivated  Irving.  Sitting 
blind  in  his  New  England  of  the  early  Renaissance,  whose 
outward  aspect  was  so  staidly  decorous,  he  found  his  imagina 
tion  most  stirred  by  those  phases  of  modern  history  which 
were  most  splendidly  unlike  his  ancestral  inexperience.  He 
chose  first  that  climax  of  Spanish  history  when  in  the  same 
year,  1492,  native  Spaniards  triumphantly  closed  their  eight 
hundred  years  of  conflict  against  the  Moorish  invaders,  and  the 
voyage  of  Columbus  opened  to  Spain  those  new  empires  of 
which  for  a  while  our  own  New  England  had  seemed  likely 
to  be  a  part.  Then  he  found  deeply  stirring  the  fatal  conflict 


SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  271 

between  Spanish  invaders  and  the  civilisations  of  prehistoric 
America.  Finally,  having  written  of  Spanish  power  at  its 
zenith,  he  began  to  record  the  tale  of  its  stormy  sunset  in  the 
cloudy  reign  of  Philip  II.  So  the  impulse  of  this  first  of  our 
literary  historians  seems  very  like  that  of  Irving.  Irving's 
books  on  Spain,  however,  are  rather  historical  romances  than 
scholarly  histories.  Instead  of  being  a  serious  narrative,  for 
example,  duly  referred  to  authority,  Irving's  w  Conquest  of 
Granada  "  takes  the  form  of  a  make-believe  chronicle  similar 
to  that  in  which  Mark  Twain  lately  told  the  story  of  Joan  of 
Arc.  Prescott,  a  little  later,  treated  Irving's  subjects  in  the 
spirit  of  a  scholarly  historian.  In  Irving  and  Prescott  alike, 
however,  the  inexperienced  American  imagination,  starved  at 
home  of  all  traces  of  antique  splendour,  found  itself  most 
strongly  stimulated  by  the  most  brilliant  pageant  of  the  roman 
tic  European  past. 

There  were  New  England  historians,  to  be  sure,  who  wrote 
about  our  own  country.  The  most  eminent  of  these  was 
George  Bancroft,  born  in  1800,  who  graduated  at  Harvard, 
and  like  Ticknor  and  Everett  was  a  student  in  Germany. 
Afterwards  he  was  for  a  while  a  tutor  at  Harvard,  and  later 
a  master  of  the  celebrated  Round  Hill  school  in  Western 
Massachusetts.  Not  long  afterwards  he  became  a  public  man  ; 
he  was  collector  of  the  port  of  Boston,  he  was  Secretary  of  the 
Navy  under  President  Polk,  and  subsequently  he  was  Minister 
to  both  England  and  Germany.  His  political  principles,  how 
ever,  so  differed  from  those  prevalent  among  the  better  classes 
of  his  early  days  in  Boston,  that  he  left  New  England  at  about 
the  age  of  forty  and  afterwards  resided  chiefly  in  Washington. 
In  1834,  the  year  in  which  Prescott's  "  Life  of  Brockden 
Brown "  was  published,  appeared,  too,  the  first  volume  of 
Bancroft's  "  History  of  the  United  States,"  a  work  on  which 
he  was  steadily  engaged  for  fifty-one  years,  and  which  he  left 
unfinished.  The  dominant  politics  of  New  England  had  been 
Federalist ;  Bancroft's  history  sympathised  with  the  Demo- 


272     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

cratic  party.  In  consequence,  sharp  fault  was  found  with 
him,  and  he  was  never  on  cordial  terms  with  the  other  New 
England  historians  ;  but  he  persevered  in  writing  history  all 
his  life,  and  for  all  the  diffuse  floridity  of  his  style,  he  is  still 
a  respectable  authority.  A  little  later,  Mr.  Richard  Hildreth, 
a  somewhat  younger  man,  wrote  a  "  History  of  the  United 
States  "  from  the  Federalist  point  of  view ;  and  Dr.  John 
Gorham  Palfrey  was  for  years  engaged  on  his  minutely  life 
less  "  History  of  New  England."  In  these,  however,  and  in 
the  other  historians  who  were  writing  of  our  own  country 
there  was  less  imaginative  vigour  and  far  less  literary  power 
than  in  Prescott  or  in  the  two  younger  New  England  histo 
rians  whose  works  are  indubitably  literature. 

The  first  of  these  younger  men  was  John  Lothrop  Motley, 
born  in  1814.  He  graduated  at  Harvard;  he  studied  for  a 
while  in  Germany,  where  he  began  in  youth  a  lifelong  friend 
ship  with  his  fellow-student  Prince  Bismarck  ;  and  toward  the 
end  of  his  life  he  lived  mostly  in  Europe.  At  one  time  he 
was  Minister  to  Austria,  and  later  to  England.  He  died  in 
England  in  1877.  As  early  as  1839  he  wrote  a  novel  which 
deserved  its  unusual  lack  of  success.  A  little  later  he  anony 
mously  wrote  for  the  u  North  American  Review  "  an  article 
on  Peter  the  Great  which  attracted  much  favourable  attention  ; 
but  it  was  not  until  1856,  when  he  was  already  past  forty 
years  old,  that  he  published  his  first  permanent  work,  "  The 
Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic."  This  was  followed,  between 
1 86 1  and  1868,  by  his  "  History  of  the  United  Netherlands," 
and  finally  in  1874  by  his  "John  of  Barneveld." 

Motley's  historical  work  is  obviously  influenced  by  the 
vividly  picturesque  writings  of  Carlyle.  It  is  clearly  influ 
enced,  too,  by  intense  sympathy  with  that  liberal  spirit  which 
he  believed  to  characterise  the  people  of  the  Netherlands  during 
their  prolonged  conflict  with  Spain.  From  these  traits  result 
several  obvious  faults.  In  trying  to  be  vivid,  he  becomes 
artificial.  In  the  matter  of  character,  too,  his  Spaniards  are 


SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  273 

apt  to  be  intensely  black,  and  his  Netherlanders  ripe  for  the 
heavenly  rewards  to  which  he  sends  them  as  serenely  as 
romantic  novelists  provide  for  the  earthly  happiness  of  heroes 
and  heroines.  Yet,  for  all  his  sincerely  partisan  temper, 
Motley  was  so  industrious  in  accumulating  material,  so  untir 
ing  in  his  effort  vividly  to  picture  its  external  aspect,  and  so 
heartily  in  sympathy  with  his  work,  that  he  is  almost  always 
interesting.  What  most  deeply  stirred  him  was  his  belief  in 
the  abstract  right  of  man  to  political  liberty  ;  and  this  he 
wished  to  celebrate  with  epic  spirit.  Belief  and  spirit  alike 
were  characteristically  American;  in  the  history  of  his  own 
country  there  was  abundant  evidence  of  both.  The  assertion 
of  liberty  which  finally  stirred  his  imagination  to  the  point  of 
expression,  however,  was  not  that  of  his  American  forefathers, 
but  the  earlier,  more  brilliantly  picturesque,  and  above  all 
more  remote  one  which  had  marked  the  history  of  a  foreign 
race  in  Europe.  Even  so  late  as  Motley's  day,  in  short,  the 
historical  imagination  of  America  still  needed  more  ardent 
stimulant  than  could  be  distilled  from  the  copious  but  juice- 
less  material  which  had  satisfied  the  acquisitive  appetite  of 
Jared  Sparks. 

The  latest  and  most  mature  of  our  New  England  historians 
was  more  national.  Francis  Parkman,  the  son  of  a  Unitarian 
minister,  was  born  at  Boston  in  1823  and  graduated  at  Har 
vard  in  1844.  By  that  time  his  health  had  already  shown 
signs  of  infirmity  ;  and  this  was  so  aggravated  by  imprudent 
physical  exposure  during  a  journey  across  the  continent  shortly 
after  graduation  that  he  was  a  lifelong  invalid.  The  brief 
record  of  his  ailments  which  he  left  as  a  scientific  document 
to  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  unwittingly  reveals 
his  astonishing  courage.  Threatened  for  a  full  half-century 
with  ruinous  malady  of  both  brain  and  body,  he  persisted,  by 
sheer  force  of  will,  with  literary  plans  which  he  had  formed 
almost  in  boyhood.  His  imagination  was  first  kindled  by  the 
forests  of  our  ancestral  continent.  These  excited  his  interest 

18 


274     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

in  the  native  races  of  America;  and  this,  in  turn,  obviously 
brought  him  to  the  frequent  alliances  between  the  French  and 
the  Indians  during  the  first  two  centuries  of  our  American 
history.  His  lifelong  work,  then,  finally  resulted  in  those 
volumes  which  record  from  beginning  to  end  the  struggles  for 
the  possession  of  North  America  between  the  French,  with 
their  Indian  allies,  and  that  English-speaking  race  whose  final 
victory  decided  that  our  continent  was  to  be  a  seminary  of 
English  Law. 

In  the  end,  then,  Parkman's  works  prove  to  possess  great 
philosophic  interest.  With  full  sympathy  for  both  sides,  with 
untiring  industry  in  the  accumulation  of  material,  with  good 
sense  so  judicial  as  to  forbid  him  the  vagaries  of  preconcep 
tion,  and  with  a  literary  sensitiveness  which  made  his  style  — 
at  first  marked  by  the  floridity  fashionable  in  1850 — finally 
a  model  of  sound  prose,  he  set  forth  the  struggles  which  de 
cided  the  political  future  of  America.  Moved  to  this  task  by 
an  impulse  rather  romantic  than  scientific,  to  be  sure,  gifted 
with  a  singularly  vivid  imagination,  too  careful  a  scholar  to 
risk  undue  generalisation,  and  throughout  life  so  hampered  by 
illness  that  he  could  very  rarely  permit  himself  prolonged 
mental  effort,  Parkman  sometimes  appears  chiefly  a  writer  of 
romantic  narrative.  As  you  grow  familiar  with  his  work, 
however,  you  feel  it  so  true  that  you  can  infuse  it  with  phi 
losophy  for  yourself.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  his 
writings  afford  as  sound  a  basis  for  historic  philosophising  as 
does  great  fiction  for  philosophising  about  human  nature. 

Parkman,  who  died  in  1893,  brings  the  story  of  renascent 
scholarship  in  New  England  almost  to  our  own  day.  When 
the  nineteenth  century  began,  our  scholarship  was  merely  a 
traditional  memory  of  classical  learning,  generally  treated  as 
the  handmaiden  either  of  professional  theology  or  of  profes 
sional  law.  When  the  spirit  of  a  new  life  began  to  declare 
itself  here,  and  people  grew  aware  of  contemporary  foreign 
achievement,  there  came  first  a  little  group  of  men  who 


SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS  275 

studied  in  Europe  and  brought  home  the  full  spirit  of  that 
continental  scholarship  which  during  the  present  century  has 
so  dominated  learning  in  America.  As  this  spirit  began  to 
express  itself  in  literary  form,  it  united  with  our  ancestral 
fondness  for  historic  records  to  produce,  just  after  the  moment 
when  formal  oratory  most  flourished  here,  an  eminent  school 
of  historical  literature.  Most  of  this  history,  however,  deals 
with  foreign  subjects.  The  historians  of  New  England  wereT 
generally  at  their  best  when  stirred  by  matters  remote  from 
any  actual  human  experience  enjoyed  either  by  themselves  or 
by  such  forefathers  as  they  could  personally  have  known  even 
by  tradition. 

Considering  the  relation  of  this  school  of  history  to  the 
historical  literature  of  England,  one  is  inevitably  reminded 
that  the  greatest  English  history,  Gibbon's  "  Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  first  appeared  in  the  very  year 
of  our  Declaration  of  Independence.  In  one  aspect,  of  course, 
the  temper  of  Gibbon  is  as  far  from  romantic  as  possible.  He 
is  the  first,  and  in  certain  aspects  the  greatest,  of  modern 
philosophical  historians ;  and  his  style  has  all  the  formality  of 
the  century  during  which  he  wrote.  In  another  aspect  the 
relation  of  Gibbon's  history  to  the  England  which  bred  him 
seems  very  like  that  of  our  New  England  histories  to  the 
country  and  the  life  which  bred  their  writers.  Gibbon  and 
our  own  historians  alike  turned  to  a  larger  and  more  splendid 
field  than  was  afforded  by  their  national  annals.  Both  alike 
were  distinctly  affected  by  an  alert  consciousness  of  what  ex 
cellent  work  had  been  done  in  contemporary  foreign  countries. 
Both  carefully  expressed  themselves  with  conscientious  devo 
tion  to  what  they  believed  the  highest  literary  canons.  Both 
produced  work  which  has  lasted  not  only  as  history  but  as 
literature  too.  Gibbon  wrote  in  the  very  year  when  America 
declared  her  independence  of  England ;  Prescott  began  his 
work  in  Boston  nearly  sixty  years  later.  There  is  an  aspect, 
then,  in  which  our  historical  literature  seems  to  lag  behind 


2;6     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

that  of  the  mother  country  much  as  Irving's  prose — con 
temporary  with  the  full  outburst  of  nineteenth-century  roman 
ticism  in  England  —  lags  behind  the  prose  of  Goldsmith. 

The  name  of  Gibbon  suggests  another  fact  about  our 
American  historians  which  is  not  quite  so  obvious  or  so  cer 
tain,  but  which  may  help  us  in  our  effort  to  define  their  na 
tional  character.  Gibbon's  power  was  incomparably  greater 
than  that  of  any  American  writer ;  but  along  with  that  power 
Gibbon  had  a  trait  which  no  one  can  fail  to  observe,  —  he 
relished  indecency.  Whoever  shares  this  relish  will  find  in 
the  untranslated  notes  to  many  of  his  passages  plenty  of  mor 
sels  which  our  present  customs  forbid  us  either  to  translate  or 
to  mention  in  general  society.  In  our  American  historians 
there  is  nothing  of  the  sort.  Their  writings  may  not  much 
have  enriched  human  imagination,  but  they  have  never  be 
fouled  it.  In  the  literature  of  every  other  country  you  will 
find  lubricity  ;  in  that  of  America  hardly  any.  Foreigners  are 
apt  to  think  this  trait  hypocritical ;  whoever  knows  the  finer 
minds  of  New  England  will  be  disposed  to  believe  it  a  matter 
not  of  conscientious  determination  but  rather  of  instinctive 
preference. 

Very  cursory,  all  this ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
historians  of  New  England,  like  the  New  England  orators, 
might  profitably  be  made  the  subject  of  minute  and  interest 
ing  separate  study.  Our  own  concern,  however,  is  chiefly 
with  pure  letters.  Before  we  can  deal  with  them  intelligently 
we  must  glance  at  still  other  aspects  of  renascent  New  Eng 
land.  We  have  glanced  at  its  oratory,  and  at  its  scholarship. 
We  must  now  turn  to  its  religion  and  its  philosophy. 


IV 

UNITARIANISM 

MARKED  as  was  the  change  in  the  oratory  and  the  scholar 
ship  of  New  England  during  the  first  quarter  of  the  nine 
teenth  century,  the  change  in  the  dominant  religious  views 
of  a  community  which  had  always  been  dominated  by  relig 
ion  was  more  marked  still.  From  the  beginning  till  after  the 
Revolution,  the  creed  of  New  England  had  been  the  Calvin 
ism  of  the  emigrant  Puritans.  In  1809,  William  Ellery 
Channing,  then  a  minister  twenty-nine  years  old,  wrote  of 
this  old  faith  in  the  following  terms :  — 

"  Calvinism  teaches,  that,  in  consequence  of  Adam's  sin  in  eating 
the  forbidden  fruit,  God  brings  into  life  all  his  posterity  with  a  nature 
wholly  corrupt,  so  that  they  are  utterly  indisposed,  disabled,  and  made 
opposite  to  all  that  is  spiritually  good,  and  wholly  inclined  to  all  evil, 
and  that  continually.  It  teaches,  that  all  mankind,  having  fallen  in 
Adam,  are  under  God's  wrath  and  curse,  and  so  made  liable  to  all 
miseries  in  this  life,  to  death  itself,  and  to  the  pains  of  hell  forever. 
It  teaches,  that,  from  this  ruined  race,  God,  out  of  his  mere  good 
pleasure,  has  elected  a  certain  number  to  be  saved  by  Christ,  not  in 
duced  to  this  choice  by  any  foresight  of  their  faith  or  good  works,  but 
wholly  by  his  free  grace  and  love ;  and  that,  having  thus  predesti 
nated  them  to  eternal  life,  he  renews  and  sanctifies  them  by  his  al 
mighty  and  special  agency,  and  brings  them  into  a  state  of  grace, 
from  which  they  cannot  fall  and  perish.  It  teaches,  that  the  rest  of 
mankind  he  is  pleased  to  pass  over,  and  to  ordain  them  to  dishonour 
and  wrath  for  their  sins,  to  the  honour  of  his  justice  and  power;  in 
other  words,  he  leaves  the  rest  to  the  corruption  in  which  they  were 
born,  withholds  the  grace  which  is  necessary  to  their  recovery,  and 
condemns  them  to  '  most  grievous  torments  in  soul  and  body  without 
intermission  in  hell-fire  for  ever.'  Such  is  Calvinism,  as  gathered 
from  the  most  authentic  records  of  the  doctrine.  Whoever  will  con 
sult  the  famous  Assembly's  Catechisms  and  Confession,  will  see  the 
peculiarities  of  the  system  in  all  their  length  and  breadth  of  deform- 


278     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

ity.  A  man  of  plain  sense,  whose  spirit  has  not  been  broken  to  this 
creed  by  education  or  terror,  will  think  that  it  is  not  necessary  for  us 
to  travel  to  heathen  countries,  to  learn  how  mournfully  the  human 
mind  may  misrepresent  the  Deity." 

"  How  mournfully  the  human  mind  may  misrepresent  the 
Deity  !  "  You  will  be  at  pains  to  find  nine  words  which 
shall  more  thoroughly  express  the  change  which  the  Renais 
sance  brought  to  the  leading  religious  spirits  of  Boston. 

The  resulting  alteration  in  dogmatic  theology  has  given  to 
the  new  school  of  New  England  divines  the  name  of  Uni 
tarians.  According  to  the  old  creed,  which  held  salvation 
from  Adam's  fall  to  be  attainable  only  through  God's  grace, 
won  by  the  mediation  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  divine  character  of 
Christ  was  essential  to  redemption ;  without  his  superhuman 
aid  all  human  beings  were  irrevocably  doomed.  But  the 
moment  you  assumed  human  nature  to  contain  adequate  seeds 
of  good,  the  necessity  for  a  divine  Redeemer  disappeared,  and 
redemption  became  only  a  matter  of  divine  convenience. 
The  second  person  of  the  Trinity  having  thus  lost  his  mystic 
office,  the  third  spread  wing  and  vanished  into  the  radiance 
of  a  new  heaven.  In  this  glorious  region  the  New  England 
Unitarians  discerned  singly  and  alone  the  one  God,  who  had 
made  man  in  his  image.  One  almost  perfect  image  they  recog 
nised  in  Jesus  Christ ;  a  great  many  inferior  but  still  indubit 
able  ones  they  found  actually  to  populate  the  Commonwealth 
of  Massachusetts. 

Although  this  radical  change  in  theology  was  what  gave 
Unitarianism  its  name,  the  underlying  feeling  which  gave  it 
being  had  little  concern  with  mystic  dogmas.  Whatever  the 
philosophy  of  primitive  Christianity,  the  philosophy  of  tradi 
tional  Christianity  had  for  centuries  taught  the  depravity  of 
human  nature ;  this  dogma  the  Puritans  had  brought  to  New 
England,  where  they  had  uncompromisingly  preserved  it. 
Now,  whatever  your  philosophy,  this  dogma  does  account 
for  such  social  phenomena  as  occur  in  densely  populated  lands 


UNITARIANISM  279 

where  economic  pressure  is  strong.  In  our  own  great  cities 
you  need  a  buoyant  spirit  and  a  hopefully  unobservant  eye  to 
perceive  much  besides  evil ;  and  if  you  compare  Boston  or 
New  York  with  London  or  Paris,  you  can  hardly  avoid  dis 
cerning,  beneath  the  European  civilisation  which  is  externally 
lovelier  than  ours,  depths  of  foulness  to  which  we  have  not 
yet  sunk.  The  Europe  of  Calvin's  time  seems  on  the  whole 
even  more  pervasively  wicked;  and  more  wicked  still  seems 
that  decadent  Roman  Empire  where  Augustine  formulated  the 
dogmas  which  at  last  Channing  so  unfalteringly  set  aside.  If 
you  chance  to  believe  in  Hell,  most  people  in  crowded  dense 
societies  really  seem  bound  thither;  and  those  who  have  the 
strength  morally  to  resist  such  environment  seem  by  contrast 
totally  different  from  the  mass  of  humanity. 

We  need  hardly  remind  ourselves,  however,  that  up  to  the 
time  of  Channing  the  history  of  America,  and.  particularly  of 
New  England,  had  been  a  history  of  national  inexperience. 
When  Cotton  Mather  wrote  his  u  Magnalia  "  in  the  closing 
seventeenth  century,  his  purpose  was  to  prove  that  during  the 
first  seventy-five  years  of  New  England  there  had  flourished 
and  lived  and  died  there  so  many  regenerate  human  beings  that 
a  man  of  sense  might  almost  statistically  infer  New  England 
to  be  specially  favoured  by  God.  The  governors  of  the  region, 
and  its  preachers  and  teachers,  not  to  speak  of  their  many 
godly  servants  and  followers,  had  revealed  Christian  graces  to 
a  degree  which  Mather's  common-sense  held  to  evidence  an 
unprecedented  outpouring  of  divine  grace.  In  this  contention 
there  was  an  element  of  truth ;  compared  with  other  races,, 
the  Yankee  people,  released  for  generations  from  the  pressure 
of  dense  European  life,  found  a  considerable  degree  of  good 
ness  surprisingly  practicable.  This  social  fact  resembled 
a  familiar  domestic  one :  an  eldest  child  is  apt  to  be  angelic 
until  some  little  brother  gets  big  enough  to  interfere  with 
him ;  and  if  by  chance  no  little  brother  appears,  the  angelic 
traits  will  very  likely  persist  until  the  child  goes  to  school  or 


280     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

otherwise  comes  in  contact  with  external  life.  Up  to  the 
days  of  Channing  himself,  the  Yankee  race  may  be  likened 
to  a  Puritan  child  gravely  playing  alone.  However  crude  its 
traits,  however  simple,  however  unwinsome,  they  were  hardly 
such  as  reasonable  men,  without  the  guidance  of  dogmatic 
teaching,  would  conclude  to  indicate  irrevocable  damnation. 
So  even  by  the  time  of  Edwards,  Calvinistic  dogma 
and  national  inexperience  were  unwittingly  at  odds.  Our 
glances  at  subsequent  American  letters  must  have  shown  how 
steadily  the  native  human  nature  of  America  continued  to 
express  itself  in  forms  which  could  not  reasonably  be  held 
infernal.  In  New  York,  for  example,  the  first  third  of  the 
nineteenth  century  produced  Brockden  Brown  and  Irving  and 
Cooper  and  Bryant ;  and,  at  a  period  distinctly  later  than  that 
with  which  we  are  now  concerned,  the  literature  of  which  they 
were  the  leaders  faded  into  no  deeper  decadence  than  the 
work  of  Poe,  of  Willis,  and  of  the  Knickerbocker  School. 
Not  eternally  memorable,  even  the  worst  of  these  personages 
does  not  seem  worthy  of  perdition  as  distinguished  from  neg 
lect.  Turning  to  certain  phases  of  New  England  at  about 
the  same  time,  we  saw  in  its  public  life  the  patriotic  intensity 
of  Webster  and  the  classical  personality  of  Everett,  estab 
lishing  a  tradition  of  sustained  dignity  which  passed  only  with 
Mr.  Winthrop,  who  lies  beneath  the  well-earned  epitaph, 
"  Eminent  as  a  scholar,  an  orator,  a  statesman,  and  a  philan 
thropist, —  above  all,  a  Christian."  And  when  we  came  to 
the  scholarship  of  New  England,  we  found  it  finally  ripening 
into  the  stainless  pages  of  Ticknor,  of  Prescott,  of  Motley, 
and  of  Parkman. 

In  a  society  like  this,  Calvinistic  dogma  seems  constantly 
further  from  truth,  as  taught  by  actual  life.  If  everything 
which  men  do  is  essentially  damnable,  if  they  can  be  saved 
from  eternal  punishment  only  by  the  divine  redemption  which 
comes  to  the  elect  through  Christ,  the  incarnate  son  of  God, 
men  ought  continually  to  behave  abominably.  However  true 


UNITARIANISM  281 

to  experience  in  dense  old  worlds,  such  habitually  abominable 
conduct  was  untrue  to  the  national  inexperience  of  America, 
and  particularly  of  renascent  New  England.  The  social 
structure  of  this  region  had  been  pretty  rigid  from  the  be 
ginning.  Well  into  the  nineteenth  century  the  clergy  main 
tained  much  of  their  pristine  social  lead ;  and  this  partly 
because  of  a  trait  which  remained  unaltered  throughout  the 
rise  and  the  decline  of  Unitarianism.  As  a  class,  they  were 
deeply  earnest  and  sincerely  truthful.  Even  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  then,  a  considerable  number  of  these  ministers,  par 
ticularly  of  the  region  about  Boston,  began  insensibly  to  relax 
the  full  rigour  of  dogmatic  Calvinism.  There  was  no  formal 
break,  but  in  the  utterances  of  Boston  pulpits  you  were  less 
and  less  apt  to  scent  hell-fire. 

When  good  Dr.  Freeman,  then,  minister  of  King's  Chapel, 
was  compelled  to  revise  the  Anglican  Prayer  Book,  and  found 
himself  conscientiously  disposed  so  to  alter  the  liturgy  as  obvi 
ously  to  modify  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity,  he  may  not  have 
felt  half  so  radical  as  time  has  proved  him.  After  the  interval 
of  a  century,  his  King's  Chapel  liturgy,  still  in  use  and  some 
times  held  to  mark  the  beginning  of  Boston  Unitarianism, 
presents  a  startling  contrast  to  most  older  forms  of  Chris 
tianity  on  this  continent.  Its  insistence  on  the  divine  unity 
of  God,  and  on  the  loving  inspiration  of  God's  word,  un 
deniably  implies  a  tendency  to  regard  Christ  only  as  an  excel 
lent  earthly  manifestation  of  God's  creative  power.  He 
seems  no  longer  a  mystic  being  whose  divine  interposition  is 
needed  to  preserve  humanity  from  destruction.  The  question 
of  his  essential  nature  is  rather  neglected.  Half-God  and 
half-man,  if  you  choose  so  to  believe,  he  is  not  exactly  God. 
Men  need  him  not  as  a  redeemer,  but  as  an  example. 

The  King's  Chapel  liturgy  was  published  in  1785.  About 
twenty  years  later,  Harvard  College  succumbed  to  the  temper 
which  the  liturgy  embodies.  The  chief  theological  chair  at 
Harvard  is  the  Hollis  Professorship  of  Divinity,  —  at  present 


282     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

held  by  a  scholar  whose  knowledge  of  Babylonian  inscriptions 
is  justly  celebrated.  Up  to  1805  it  had  remained  a  stronghold 
of  Calvinistic  doctrine.  In  that  year  it  was  given  to  the  Rev 
erend  Henry  Ware,  an  avowed  Unitarian,  whose  conceptions 
of  human  nature  were  introspectively  confirmed  by  lifelong 
contemplation  of  the  fact  that "  Ware  was  honest  as  all  Wares 
be."  The  orthodox  party  at  Harvard  had  opposed  Ware 
with  all  their  might ;  so  when  he  was  made  Hollis  Professor, 
the  ancestral  college  of  Puritan  New  England  was  finally 
handed  over  to  Unitarianism.  Until  very  recent  years  this 
remained  its  acknowledged  faith.  At  last  its  liberalism  became 
such  as  to  make  even  Unitarian  dogmas  inconvenient ;  its 
avowed  religion  is  now  described  as  non-sectarian,  and  its 
chapel  has  long  abandoned  the  use  of  the  sacrament. 

Defeated  at  Harvard,  the  orthodox  party  retreated  to  An- 
dover,  where  they  founded  the  Theological  Seminary  which 
until  very  lately  forlornly  defended  old  Calvinism  in  a  region 
abandoned  to  its  enemies.  Nowadays  the  whole  thing  is  fad 
ing  into  history,  but  at  first  the  conflict  was  heart-breaking. 
There  is  a  pathetic  story  of  Professor  Pearson,  who,  on  the 
election  of  Ware,  retired  from  Harvard  to  become  one  of  the 
founders  of  Andover.  In  his  last  days  the  good  man's  speech 
was  paralysed  ;  and  when  toward  the  end  of  his  life  an  old 
Harvard  friend,  who  had  not  seen  him  for  years,  came  to 
visit  him,  time  had  done  its  work.  With  mournful  tears  in 
his  eyes  the  dumb  old  Calvinist  took  his  friend's  hand  and 
stroked  it,  unable  to  speak  his  grief  that  their  ways  had  parted 
for  eternity.  For  on  each  side  faith  was  fervent ;  and  if  the 
conquering  Unitarians  believed  themselves  to  be  destroying 
pernicious  and  ugly  heresy,  the  Calvinists  believed  just  as 
sincerely  that  in  angelic  guise  the  devil  had  possessed  himself 
of  New  England.  In  their  mood,  there  was  a  consequent 
depth  of  despair  to  which  the  Unitarians  have  hardly  done 
full  justice.  To  the  Unitarian  mind  there  has  never  been  any 
valid  reason  why  good  men  of  other  opinions  than  theirs  should 


UNITARIANISM  283 

not  enjoy  everlasting  bliss ;  but  the  very  essence  of  the 
Calvinists'  creed  condemned  to  everlasting  woe  every  human 
being  who  rejected  the  divinely  revealed  truth  of  their  grimly 
uncompromising  system. 

To  suppose,  however,  that  the  founders  of  Unitarianism 
meant  to  be  unchristian  would  be  totally  to  misunderstand  them. 
They  revered  the  Scriptures  as  profoundly  as  ever  Calvinists 
did.  The  difference  was  that  they  discerned  in  Scripture  no 
such  teaching  as  the  experience  of  old-world  centuries  had 
crystallised  into  Calvinistic  dogma.  In  the  first  place,  they 
found  in  the  Bible  no  passages  which  necessarily  involved  the 
dogma  of  the  Trinity.  There  might  be  puzzling  sentences  ; 
but  there  were  also  clear,  constant  statements  that  there  is  one 
God,  who  made  man  in  His  image.  Very  good,  they  held  ; 
this  assertion  amounts  to  proof  that  men  are  the  children  of 
God,  and  that  incidentally  they  have  inherited  from  God  the 
divine  faculties  of  reason  and  of  conscience.  When  in 
the  Bible,  then,  there  are  puzzling  texts,  or  when  in  life 
there  are  puzzling  moments,  our  duty  is  to  face  them  in  a 
conscientiously  reasonable  temper.  If  we  are  truly  made  in 
the  image  of  God,  we  shall  thus  reach  true  conclusions ;  and 
meanwhile,  to  guide  our  way,  God  has  made  that  most  excel 
lent  of  his  creatures,  Jesus  Christ,  and  has  authentically  re 
corded  his  career  in  the  Gospels  of  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke, 
and  John.  Search  these  yourself;  use  the  light  of  the  Scrip 
tures  ;  remember  the  example  of  Christ ;  and  all  will  be  well. 
If  there  be  any  such  thing  as  damnation,  it  can  result  only 
from  lack  of  self-searching,  from  deliberate  neglect  of  scrip 
tural  light,  or  from  wilful  disregard  of  Christ's  example. 

From  this  state  of  faith  there  naturally  resulted  in  Unita 
rianism  a  degree  of  spiritual  freedom  which  allowed  each 
minister  to  proclaim  whatever  truth  presented  itself  to  his 
conscience.  Unitarianism  has  never  formulated  a  creed.  It 
has  tacitly  accepted,  however,  certain  traditions  which  have 
been  classically  set  forth  by  its  great  apostle,  William  Ellery 


284     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Channing.  He  was  born  at  Newport  in  1780;  he  took 
his  degree  at  Harvard  in  1798;  and  from  180310  1840 
he  was  minister  at  the  Federal  Street  Church  in  Boston. 
He  died  in  1842. 

In  1819,  he  preached  at  Baltimore,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  ordination  of  Jared  Sparks,  his  famous  sermon  on  Uni 
tarian  Christianity.  He  took  his  text  from  I  Thess.  v.  21  : 
"  Prove  all  things ;  hold  fast  that  which  is  good."  His  first 
point  is  that  "  we  regard  the  Scriptures  as  the  records  of 
God's  successive  revelations  to  mankind,  and  particularly  of 
the  last  and  most  perfect  revelation  of  his  will  by  Jesus 
Christ."  The  Scriptures,  he  goes  on  to  say,  must  be  inter 
preted  by  the  light  of  reason.  So,  applying  reason  to  Scrip 
ture,  he  deduces  in  the  first  place  the  doctrine  of  God's 
unity,  "  that  there  is  one  God,  and  one  only ;  "  secondly, 
that  "Jesus  is  one  mind,  one  soul,  one  being,  as  truly  one 
as  we  are,  and  equally  distinct  from  the  one  God  ;  "  thirdly, 
that  "  God  is  morally  perfect ;  "  fourthly,  that  "  Jesus  was 
sent  by  the  Father  to  effect  a  moral  or  spiritual  deliverance  of 
mankind ;  that  is,  to  rescue  men  from  sin  and  its  conse 
quences,  and  to  bring  them  to  a  state  of  everlasting  purity  and 
happiness ; "  and,  fifthly,  that  "  all  virtue  has  its  foundation  in 
the  moral  nature  of  man,  that  is,  in  conscience,  or  his  sense  of 
duty,  and  in  the  power  of  forming  his  temper  and  life  accord 
ing  to  conscience." 

On  this  supreme  authority  of  conscience  Unitarianism 
tended  to  throw  more  and  more  emphasis.  Toward  the  end 
of  Channing's  life  he  wrote  some  introductory  remarks  to 
a  collected  edition  of  his  works  from  which  the  following  par 
agraph  is  worth  attention  :  — 

"  We  must  start  in  religion  from  our  own  souls.  In  these  is  the 
fountain  of  all  divine  truth.  An  outward  revelation  is  only  possible 
and  intelligible,  on  the  ground  of  conceptions  and  principles,  previ 
ously  furnished  by  the  soul.  Here  is  our  primitive  teacher  and  light. 
Let  us  not  disparage  it  There  are,  indeed,  philosophical  schools  of 
the  present  day,  who  tell  us  that  we  are  to  start  in  all  our  speculations 


UNITARIANISM  285 

from  the  Absolute,  the  Infinite.  But  we  rise  to  these  conceptions 
from  the  contemplation  of  our  own  nature ;  and  even  if  it  were  not  so, 
of  what  avail  would  be  the  notion  of  an  Absolute,  Infinite  existence, 
and  Uncaused  Unity,  if  stripped  of  all  those  intellectual  and  moral 
attributes,  which  we  learn  only  from  our  own  souls  ?  What  but  a 
vague  shadow,  a  sounding  name,  is  the  metaphysical  Deity,  the  sub 
stance  without  modes,  the  being  without  properties,  the  naked  unity, 
which  performs  such  a  part  in  some  of  our  philosophical  systems  ? 
The  only  God,  whom  our  thoughts  can  rest  on,  and  our  hearts  can 
cling  to,  and  our  consciences  can  recognise,  is  the  God  whose  image 
dwells  in  our  own  souls.  The  grand  ideas  of  Power,  Reason,  Wis 
dom,  Love,  Rectitude,  Holiness,  Blessedness,  that  is,  of  all  God's 
attributes,  come  from  within,  from  the  action  of  our  own  spiritual 
nature.  Many  indeed  think  that  they  learn  God  from  marks  of  design 
and  skill  in  the  outward  world;  but  our  ideas  of  design  and  skill,  of  a 
determining  cause,  of  an  end  or  purpose,  are  derived  from  conscious 
ness,  from  our  own  souls.  Thus  the  soul  is  the  spring  of  our  know 
ledge  of  God." 

A  more  astonishing  departure  from  all  the  traditions  of 
ecclesiastical  Christianity  was  never  phrased.  Human  nature, 
Channing  holds,  is  essentially  good ;  man  is  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  and  all  man  need  do  is  to  follow  the  light 
which  God  has  given  him.  The  greatest  source  of  that  light, 
of  course,  is  Christ.  Whether  Christ  was  literally  the  son 
of  God  or  not  makes  no  difference :  he  walked  the  earth ; 
he  was  the  most  perfect  of  men  ;  and  we  can  follow  him. 
He  suffered  little  children  to  come  unto  him,  and  he  will 
suffer  us  larger  children  to  come  likewise.  He  was  human, 
and  so  are  we.  In  earthly  life  he  could  avoid  damnation,  and 
all  we  need  do  —  if  indeed  there  be  real  danger  of  damnation  at 
all  —  is  to  behave  as  nearly  like  him  as  we  can.  If  the  false 
teachings  of  a  moribund  heresy  make  all  this  reasonable  truth 
seem  questionable,  look  about  you  :  do  you  find  your  friends 
damnable,  or,  on  the  whole,  made  in  the  image  of  God  ?  Do 
they  deserve,  as  in  that  sermon  of  Edwards's,  to  be  held  sus 
pended  by  a  spider-like  thread  over  a  fiery  furnace  into  which 
they  may  justly  be  cast  at  any  moment;  or  rather,  for  all 
their  faults  and  errors,  do  they  not  merit  eternal  mercy  ? 


286     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

So  if  all  of  us  try  to  do  our  best,  is  there  any  reasonable 
cause  for  fearing  that  everything  shall  not  ultimately  go  right  ? 
The  old  Unitarians  looked  about  them  and  honestly  found 
human  nature  reassuring. 

What  ultimately  distinguishes  early  Unitarianism  from  the 
Calvinism  which  it  so  calmly  dethroned,  then,  is  this  respect 
for  what  is  good  in  human  nature  as  contrasted  with  the 
Calvinistic  insistence  on  what  is  bad.  What  is  good  needs 
encouragement;  what  is  bad  needs  checking.  What  is  good 
merits  freedom;  what  is  bad  demands  control.  Obedience 
to  authority,  the  Calvinists  held,  may  reveal  in  you  the  tokens 
of  salvation ;  spiritual  freedom,  the  Unitarians  maintained, 
must  result  in  spiritual  growth.  For  a  dogmatic  dread  they 
substituted  an  illimitable  hope.  Evil  and  sin,  sorrow  and 
weakness,  they  did  not  deny  ;  but  trusting  in  the  infinite  good 
ness  of  God,  they  could  not  believe  evil  or  sin,  the  sorrows  or 
the  weaknesses  of  humanity,  to  be  more  than  passing  shadows. 
Inspired  with  this  newly  hopeful  spirit,  they  held  their  way 
through  the  New  England  whose  better  sort  were  content  for 
half  a  century  to  follow  them. 

Channing  has  been  dead  for  more  than  fifty  years,  and 
the  religious  movement  of  which  he  was  the  central  figure  is 
no  longer  in  the  ascendant.  He  himself  protested  against 
doctrinal  stagnation  :  "  Unitarianism,"  ...  he  wrote  in 
1841,  "began  as  a  protest  against  the  rejection  of  reason, — 
against  mental  slavery.  It  pledged  itself  to  progress  as  its 
life's  end ;  but  it  has  gradually  grown  stationary,  and  now  we 
have  a  Unitarian  orthodoxy."  The  good  man  need  not  have 
troubled  himself  about  that.  Almost  in  his  own  time,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  progress  of  personal  freedom  led  to  something 
like  rejection  of  Christianity;  on  the  other  hand,  it  reacted 
into  acceptance  of  the  oldest  Christian  traditions.  Typical 
examples  of  these  tendencies  may  be  found  in  the  careers  of 
Mr.  George  Ripley  and  his  wife.  Beginning  in  full  sympathy, 
as  ardent  Unitarians,  they  so  parted  in  faith  that  Mrs.  Ripley 


UNITARIANISM  287 

died  in  communion  with  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  while 
Mr.  Ripley,  who  long  survived  her,  became  a  devout  free 
thinker. 

Our  present  concern,  however,  is  not  with  that  decay  of 
New  England  Unitarianism  so  inevitably  involved  in  the 
individualism  of  its  teaching.  Here  we  are  concerned  rather 
with  its  pristine  growth  and  vigour.  In  the  article  on  "  Uni 
tarianism  in  Boston,"  contributed  by  the  late  Dr.  Andrew 
Preston  Peabody  to  the  third  volume  of  Winsor's  "  Memorial 
History  of  Boston,"  there  is  a  list  of  the  Unitarian  ministers 
of  the  town  from  the  beginning  to  about  1875.  Whoever 
knows  anything  of  the  personalities  for  which  these  names 
stand  will  be  struck  with  one  fact  :  even  more  certainly  than 
the  elder  worthies  whom  Cotton  Mather  recorded  in  his 
u  Magnalia,"  these  are  a  company  of  such  sweet,  pure,  noble 
spirits  as  must  arouse  in  men  who  dwell  with  them  a  deep 
respect  for  human  nature.  The  last  commanding  spiritual 
teacher  of  New  England  chanced  to  be  of  another  faith  ;  but 
what  made  Phillips  Brooks  such  a  power  in  Boston  was  the 
same  kind  of  personality  which  half  a  century  before  him  had 
generally  distinguished  the  Unitarian  clergy.  Whoever  knew 
the  great  bishop  personally  can  hardly  have  failed  to  observe 
the  trait  which  was  at  once  his  strongest  and  his  weakest : 
his  instinctive  nature  was  so  good  that  he  never  quite  realised 
the  badness  and  the  uncleanness  which  beset  the  lives  of 
common  men  with  temptation.  In  him,  just  as  in  the  fathers 
of  Unitarianism,  the  national  inexperience  of  America  per 
mitted  almost  unrestrained  the  development  of  a  moral  purity 
which  to  those  who  possess  it  makes  the  grim  philosophy 
of  damnation  seem  an  ill-conceived  nursery  tale. 

The  Unitarianism  of  New  England,  of  course,  was  not 
unique  either  theologically  or  philosophically.  In  its  isolated 
home,  however,  it  chanced  to  develop  one  feature  which 
distinguishes  its  early  career  from  similar  phases  of  religious 
history  elsewhere.  The  astonishing  personal  purity  and  moral 


288      THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

beauty  of  its  leaders  combined  with  their  engaging  theology  to 
effect  the  rapid  social  conquest  of  the  whole  region  about 
Boston.  We  have  seen  how  King's  Chapel  and  Harvard 
College  passed  into  Unitarian  hands.  The  same  was  true  of 
nearly  all  the  old  Puritan  churches.  The  First  Church  of 
Boston,  John  Cotton's,  became  Unitarian ;  so  did  the  Second 
Church,  which  throughout  their  lives  the  Mathers  had  held  as 
such  a  stronghold  of  orthodoxy  ;  so,  with  less  violence  to 
its  history,  did  the  Brattle  Street ;  the  only  Boston  church 
of  consequence  which  held  out  was  the  Old  South,  which 
adhered  to  its  pristine  dogmas  until  1899.  The  ancestral 
church  of  Cambridge  broke  in  two;  and  the  section  of  its 
parishioners  who  deposed  Abiel  Holmes  for  faithfulness  to  his 
old  creed  captured  both  the  meeting-house  and  the  communion 
plate.  Something  similar  occurred  at  Plymouth,  where  at  the 
entrance  of  the  oldest  burying-ground  of  New  England  may 
now  be  seen  two  edifices,  each  of  which  claims  direct  descent 
from  the  earliest  of  all  New  England  churches.  One  has 
maintained  orthodoxy ;  but  the  more  impressive  is  that  which 
followed  the  fashion  and  became  Unitarian. 

This  general  conquest  of  ecclesiastical  strongholds  by  the 
Unitarians  deeply  affected  the  whole  structure  of  Massa 
chusetts  society.  Elsewhere  in  America,  perhaps,  and  surely 
in  England,  Unitarianism  has  generally  presented  itself  as 
dissenting  dissent,  and  has  consequently  been  exposed  to  the 
kind  of  social  disfavour  which  aggressive  radicalism  is  apt 
anywhere  to  involve.  In  the  isolated  capital  of  isolated  New 
England,  on  the  other  hand,  where  two  centuries  had  es 
tablished  such  a  rigid  social  system,  the  capture  of  the  old 
churches  meant  the  capture,  too,  of  almost  every  social 
stronghold.  In  addition  to  its  inherent  charm,  the  pristine 
Unitarianism  of  Massachusetts  was  strengthened  by  all  the 
force  of  fashion  in  a  community  where  somewhat  eccentric 
fashion  has  always  had  great  weight.  Whoever  clung  to 
the  older  faith  did  so  at  his  social  peril. 


UNITARIANISM  289 

This  fact  is  nowhere  more  evident  than  in  the  history 
of  New  England  letters.  Almost  everybody  who  attained 
literary  distinction  in  New  England  during  the  nineteenth 
century  was  either  a  Unitarian  or  closely  associated  with  Uni 
tarian  influences.  The  single  man  of  letters  whom  Boston 
orthodoxy  produced  was  poor  Willis ;  and  he  found  the  social 
atmosphere  of  New  England  too  stifling  for  the  convivial  son 
of  an  orthodox  deacon.  At  least  in  letters,  which  throughout 
the  literary  dominance  of  New  England  preserved  there  the 
same  kind  of  social  distinction  that  marked  Mr.  Bryant's  ca 
reer  in  New  York,  creative  energy  declared  itself  chiefly  among 
those  who  had  been  taught  to  believe  themselves  created  in 
the  image  of  the  Creator. 


IQ 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 

THOUGH  we  have  followed  the  oratory,  the  scholarship,  and 
the  Unitarianism  of  New  England  almost  to  the  present  time, 
there  has  been  reason  for  considering  them  before  the  other 
phases  of  Renaissance  in  that  isolated  region  where  the  nine 
teenth  century  produced  such  a  change.  At  various  times  we 
have  touched  on  the  fact  that  the  period  from  1798  to  1832  — 
marked  in  England  by  everything  between  the  "  Lyrical  Bal 
lads  "  and  the  death  of  Scott,  and  in  America  by  all  the  New 
York  literature  from  Brockden  Brown  to  Bryant  —  really  com 
prised  an  epoch  in  the  literary  history  of  both  countries.  It 
was  during  this  period  that  the  three  phases  of  intellectual 
life  which  we  have  now  considered  fully  declared  themselves 
in  New  England ;  and  in  these  years  nothing  else  of  equal 
importance  developed  there. 

The  very  mention  of  the  dates  in  question  should  remind  us 
that  throughout  the  English-speaking  world  the  revolutionary 
spirit  was  in  the  air.  It  showed  itself  in  the  extreme  individu 
alism  of  literature  in  England,  where  the  writers  suddenly 
became  almost  as  unlike  one  another  as  those  of  the  preceding 
century  had  been  similar ;  it  showed  itself  there  in  that  consti 
tutional  revolution  which  finally  resulted  in  the  Reform  Bill ; 
and  in  native  American  letters  it  showed  itself  in  the  some 
what  imitative  but  soundly  sweet  writings  of  Brockden  Brown, 
Irving,  Cooper,  and  Bryant.  The  contrast  between  these  and 
the  contemporary  writings  of  England  may  already  have  sug 
gested  a  marked  difference  in  the  societies  to  which,  as  we 
can  now  see,  the  revolutionary  spirit  came  at  the  same  time. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  291 

The  essence  of  this  spirit  is  its  fervid  faith  in  the  excellence 
of  human  nature  j  let  men  be  freed  from  all  needless  con 
trol,  it  holds,  and  they  may  be  trusted  to  work  out  their 
admirable  salvation.  In  the  old  world,  where  the  force  of 
custom  had  been  gathering  for  immemorial  centuries,  the 
speech  and  behaviour  of  enfranchised  humanity  was  apt  to 
take  extravagant  form.  In  America,  on  the  other  hand, 
where  the  one  thing  which  had  been  most  lacking  was  the 
semblance  of  polite  civilisation,  the  very  impulse  which  in 
Europe  showed  itself  destructive  appeared  in  a  guise  which 
at  first  makes  it  hard  to  recognise. 

One  need  not  ponder  long,  however,  to  feel,  even  in  this 
staid  new  America,  a  note  as  fresh  as  was  the  most  extrava 
gant  revolutionary  expression  in  Europe.  Our  elaborately 
rhetorical  oratory,  to  be  sure,  and  our  decorous  scholarship, 
seem  on  the  surface  far  from  revolutionary ;  and  so  does  the 
gently  insignificant  literature  which  was  contemporary  with 
them  a  bit  further  south.  Yet  all  alike  were  as  different  from 
anything  which  America  had  uttered  before  as  was  the  poetry 
of  Wordsworth  .or  of  Shelley  from  what  had  previously  been 
known  in  England.  When  we  came  to  the  Unitarianism  of 
New  England,  the  revolutionary  spirit  showed  itself  more 
plainly.  The  creed  of  Channing  was  of  a  kind  which,  except 
for  the  unusual  chance  of  immediate  social  dominance,  might 
almost  at  once  have  revealed  its  disintegrant  character.  Hap 
pening,  as  it  did,  however,  to  possess  itself  of  the  ecclesiastical 
system  established  by  generations  of  ancestral  orthodoxy,  it 
produced  at  first  no  more  obvious  superficial  change  than  a 
refreshing  amelioration  of  the  prospects  visible  from  the  good 
old  Boston  pulpits. 

The  enfranchised  human  nature  of  New  England,  too,  at 
first  expressed  itself  in  no  more  appalling  forms  than  the 
oratory  of  Webster  or  of  Everett ;  than  the  Anthology  Club, 
the  Boston  Athenaeum,  and  the  "  North  American  Review  ;  " 
than  the  saintly  personality  and  the  ethereal  speculations  of 


292     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Channing.  Under  such  revolutionary  influences  as  these  the 
new  generation  of  Boston  grew  up,  which  was  to  find  expres 
sion  a  few  years  later. 

In  all  such  considerations  as  this  there  is  danger  of  taking 
consecutive  phases  of  development  too  literally.  To  say  that 
Unitarianism  caused  the  subsequent  manifestation  of  free 
thought  in  New  England  would  be  too  much;  but  no  one 
can  doubt  that  the  world-wide  revolutionary  spirit,  of  which 
the -first  New  England  manifestation  was  the  religious  revolu 
tion  effected  by  Unitarianism,  impelled  the  following  genera- 
'  w/  tion  to  that  outbreak  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  anarchy  which 
is  generally  called  Transcendentalism. 

This  queerly  intangible  Transcendentalism  can  best  be 
understood,  indeed,  by  recurring  to  the  text  of  Channing's 
celebrated  sermon  on  Unitarian  Christianity.  "  Prove  all 
things,"  asserted  the  cheerful  theologian  ;  "  hold  fast  that 
which  is  good."  Prove  all  things  ;  do  not  accept  tradition ; 
scrutinise  whatever  presents  itself  to  you.  If  evil,  though  de 
fended  by  the  Bible  itself,  cast  it  aside ;  if  good,  even  though 
the  Bible  utterly  neglect  it,  cherish  it  as  a  gift  of  God.  To 
this  principle  Channing  adhered  all  his  life  ;  but  Channing's 
life  was  essentially  clerical ;  it  was  that  of  a  conscientious 
and  disinterested  religious  teacher,  whose  great  personal  au 
thority  was  strengthened  by  rare  purity  of  nature.  Educated 
in  something  like  the  old  school  of  theology,  he  generally  con 
secrated  his  devout  boldness  of  thought  to  religious  matters. 

In  the  generation  which  grew  up  under  the  influence  of 
which  Channing  is  the  most  distinguished  type,  the  revolutionary 
spirit  declared  itself  more  broadly.  The  traditional  education 
of  New  England  had  been  confined  to  theology,  to  classics 
and  mathematics,  and  to  the  Common  Law.  So  far  as  it  had 
indulged  itself  in  speculative  philosophy,  it  had  treated  this  as 
ancillary,  mostly  to  theology  and  sometimes  to  jurisprudence. 
Meanwhile  it  had  paid  little  attention  to  the  modern  literature 
even  of  England,  and  none  at  all  to  that  of  other  languages 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  293 

than  English.  Obviously  there  were  many  things  in  this 
world  which  intelligent  young  Yankees  might  advantageously 
prove,  with  a  view  to  discovering  whether  they  were  worth 
holding  fast.  To  say  that  they  did  so  in  obedience  to  Chan- 
ning's  specific  teachings  would  be  mistaken  ;  but  certainly  in 
obedience  to  the  same  motive  which  induced  his  choice  of 
that  Thessalonian  text,  the  more  active  and  vigorous  young 
minds  of  New  England  attacked,  wherever  they  could  find 
them,  the  records  of  human  wisdom.  They  wished  to  make 
up  their  own  minds  as  to  what  they  believed  about  the  eterni 
ties,  and  to  do  so  with  no  more  deference  to  any  authority 
than  that  authority  seemed  rationally  to  deserve. 

The  name  commonly  given  to  the  unsystematised  results  at 
which  they  arrived  —  widely  differing  with  every  individual  — 
is  apt.  However  they  differed,  these  impulsive  and  untrained 
philosophical  thinkers  of  renascent  New  England  were  idealists. 
With  the  aid  of  reading  as  wide  as  their  Resources  would  allow, 
they  endeavoured  to  give  themselves  an  account  of  what  the 
universe  really  means.  They  became  aware  that  our  senses 
perceive  only  the  phenomena  of  life,  and  that  behind  these 
phenomena,  beyond  the  range  of  human  senses,  lurk  things 
not  phenomenal.  The  evolutionary  philosophy  which  has 
followed  theirs  holds  a  similar  conception  ;  it  divides  all  things 
into  two  groups,  —  the  phenomenal  or  knowable,  concerning 
which  our  knowledge  can  be  tested  by  observation  or  experi 
ment,  and  the  unknowable,  concerning  which  no  observation 
or  experiment  can  prove  anything.  With  scientific  hardness 
of  head  evolutionary  philosophy  consequently  confines  its 
energies  to  phenomena.  With  unscientific  enthusiasm  for 
freedom  the  first  enfranchised  thinkers  of  New  England 
troubled  themselves  little  about  phenomena,  and  devoted  their 
energies  to  thinking  and  talking  about  that  great  group  of  un- 
demonstrable  truths  which  must  always  transcend  human 
experience.  In  so  doing,  we  can  see  now,  they  followed  an 
instinct  innate  in  their  race.  They  were  descended  from  two 


294     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

centuries  of  Puritanism ;  and  though  the  Puritans  exerted 
their  philosophic  thought  within  dogmatically  fixed  limits, 
they  were  intense  idealists,  too.  Their  whole  temperamental 
energy  was  concentrated  in  efforts  definitely  to  perceive  abso 
lute  truths  quite  beyond  the  range  of  any  earthly  senses.  The 
real  distinction  between  the  Puritan  idealists  and  the  Trans 
cendental  idealists  of  the  nineteenth  century  proves  little  more 
than  that  these  discarded  all  dogmatic  limit. 

A  typical  example  of  the  state  of  things  which  ensued 
lately  transpired  in  the  talk  of  a  Bostonian,  educated  more 
than  fifty  years  ago  under  Transcendental  influences,  but  long 
since  become  an  earnest  Christian.  Some  discussion  of  meta 
physics  arising,  he  gravely  said  that  of  course  no  one  doubted 
human  nature  to  be  quadruple,  —  consisting  of  mind,  body, 
soul,  and  spirit.  The  distinction  between  mind  and  body  is 
generally  familiar^  and  that  which  separates  the  soul  from 
these  is  nowise  strange  to  any  one  familiar  with  the  Trans 
cendental  period ;  but  what  the  difference  may  be  between  soul 
and  spirit  only  a  Transcendentalist  could  ever  have  told  you. 
Yet  this  dogmatic  assertion  of  old  Transcendentalism  had  sur 
vived  as  unquestioned  truth  in  a  mind  which  for  years  had  been 
devoutly  obedient  to  orthodox  Christianity.  Idealists,  like 
this,  making  dogmatic  assertions  about  unknowable  things, 
pretty  much  all  the  Transcendentalists  were. 

A  second  agreement  among  them  one  can  generally  assert : 
almost  all  believed  in  innate  ideas.  Such  a  belief,  of  course, 
is  inherent  in  the  doctrine  of  conscience  so  vigorously  main 
tained  by  Channing.  Metaphysically  the  matter  is  endlessly 
disputable,  belonging  to  the  region  where  proof  is  out  of  the 
question.  Do  men  come  into  the  world  with  blank  minds  on 
which  images  are  impressed  by  the  accidents  of  our  earthly 
experience  ?  or  are  they  born  with  certain  ideas,  definitely  and 
unchangeably  true  ?  The  question  has  been  discussed  and  per 
haps  will  be  discussed  by  many  schools  of  philosophy.  Trans 
cendentalism  did  not  trouble  itself  with  much  formal  discussion. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  295 

It  assumed  innate  ideas ;  it  found  no  reason  for  questioning 
the  assumption ;  and  the  innate  ideas  which  it  most  insisted 
on  concerned  not  so  much  body  and  mind  as  soul  and  spirit. 
Just  as  the  normal  body  is  born  with  a  sense  of  touch  or  of 
sight,  the  Transcendentalists  held,  the  normal  soul  and  spirit  are 
born  with  a  sense  of  right  and  wrong.  So,  less  certainly  but 
very  probably,  the  normal  mind  is  born  with  a  sense  of  truth 
and  falsehood.  Very  good ;  when  a  question  is  presented, 
all  you  need  do  is  to  inquire  of  yourself  whether  it  is  true. 
Answer  yourself  earnestly,  and  the  question  is  settled.  This 
is  particularly  true  when  the  question  concerns  right  and 
wrong.  Human  nature  is  good  ;  you  are  made  right,  —  mind, 
body,  soul,  spirit,  and  all.  Obey  yourself,  and  you  need  have 
no  fear.  All  things  worth  serious  interest  transcend  human 
experience  ;  but  a  trustworthy  clew  to  them  is  to  be  found 
in  the  unfathomable  excellence  of  human  minds,  souls,  and 
spirits. 

Though  very  possibly  no  single  Transcendentalist  would 
have  accepted  so  baldly  stated  a  creed,  some  such  system  may 
be  conceived  as  the  Platonic  ideal  toward  which  Transcenden 
talists  generally  tended.  You  can  understand  them  best  by 
comparing  one  and  all  with  such  a  generalised  type,  which 
no  one  precisely  represented.  With  a  temper  which,  how 
ever  it  began,  soon  developed  into  this  hopefully  impalpable 
philosophy,  the  more  ardent  youths  who  grew  up  in  Boston 
when  its  theology  was  dominated  by  Unitarianism,  and  when 
its  scholarship  was  at  last  so  enlarged  as  to  include  the  whole 
range  of  human  learning,  faced  whatever  human  records  they 
could  find,  to  prove  and  to  hold  fast  those  which  were  good. 

The  influences  thus  brought  to  bear  on  New  England 
were  almost  innumerable,  but  among  them  two  or  three  were 
specially  evident.  The  most  important  was  probably  German 
thought,  at  a  time  when  German  philosophy  was  most  meta 
physical  and  German  literature  most  romantic.  This,  in 
deed,  had  had  great  influence  on  contemporary  England.  No 


295     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

two  men  of  letters  in  the  nineteenth  century  affected  English 
thought  more  evidently  than  Coleridge  and  Carlyle ;  and 
both  were  saturated  with  German  philosophy.  To  New 
England  these  influences  swiftly  spread.  In  1800,  it  has 
been  said,  hardly  a  German  book  could  be  found  in  Boston. 
Before  Channing  died,  in  1842,  you  could  find  in  Boston  few 
educated  people  who  could  not  talk  with  glib  delight  about 
German  philosophy,  German  literature,  and  German  music. 
Another  thing  which  appears  very  strongly  in  Transcendental 
writings  is  the  influence  of  French  eclectic  philosophy.  At 
one  time  the  names  of  JoufFroy  and  Cousin  were  as  familiar 
to  Yankee  ears  as  were  those  of  Locke  or  Descartes  or  Kant. 
Perhaps  more  heartily  still  this  whole  school  of  enthusiastic 
seekers  for  truth  welcomed  that  wide  range  of  modern  liter 
ature,  English  and  foreign  alike,  which  was  at  last  thrown 
open  by  contemporary  scholars  so  distinct  from  them  in 
temper  as  the  Smith  Professors,  —  Ticknor  and  Longfellow 
and  Lowell. 

For  this  almost  riotous  delight  in  pure  literature  there  was 
a  reason  now  long  past.  The  Puritans  generally  had  con 
scientious  objections  to  fine  art.  So  only  at  the  moment  to 
which  we  are  now  come  could  the  instinct  of  native  New 
England  for  fine  art  conscientiously  be  satisfied.  Now,  the 
fine  arts,  however  else  they  may  be  classified,  may  pretty 
certainly  be  divided  into  two  groups :  those  of  which  the 
masterpieces  may  be  indefinitely  reproduced  and  those  of 
which  each  masterpiece  must  inevitably  remain  unique. 
Architecture,  for  example,  must  remain  permanently  settled 
on  the  foundations  laid  for  each  building;  a  great  painting 
can  exist  only  in  the  one  place  where  it  is  actually  hung, 
and  a  great  statue  in  that  where  it  actually  stands.  During 
the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years,  to  be  sure,  the  astonishing 
development  of  photography  has  to  some  degree  extended  the 
range  of  plastic  arts.  Until  long  after  the  Transcendental 
period,  however,  processes  of  reproduction  were  at  once  so 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  297 

costly  and  so  uncertain  that  architecture,  painting,  and  sculp 
ture  could  be  appreciatively  studied  and  enjoyed  only  by  people 
who  could  travel  to  where  masterpieces  exist.  With  music 
the  case  was  decidedly  different.  Musical  scores  can  be  car 
ried  anywhere  ;  so  in  general  can  musical  instruments  ;  and 
provided  that  you  brought  to  New  England  proper  scores, 
proper  instruments,  and  tolerably  trained  musicians,  you  could 
have  in  New  England  pretty  good  music.  When  it  came 
to  poetry,  things  were  better  still.  All  you  had  to  do  was  to 
import  the  books  in  which  the  masterpieces  of  poetry  were 
printed  ;  then  every  educated  man  could  read  the  masterpieces 
for  himself. 

Nowadays  music  and  literature  are  as  familiar  in  Boston 
as  anywhere  in  the  world ;  and  along  with  this  familiarity  has 
come,  as  always  comes,  a  definite  standard  of  taste,  which 
combines  with  awe-stricken  respect  for  established  reputations 
to  make  everyday  people  feel  more  at  ease  in  the  presence  of 
works  which  need  not  be  taken  seriously.  Seventy  years 
ago  the  Renaissance  of  New  England  was  in  no  aspect  more 
typically  renascent  than  in  the  unfeigned  eagerness  with  which 
its  love  of  novelty  delighted  in  the  excellences  of  those  newly 
found  fine  arts,  poetry  and  music.  The  masterpieces  of 
music  gave  people  some  such  unfeigned  delight  as  is  now 
found  only  in  popular  tunes.  The  masterpieces  of  poetry 
similarly  delighted  them  as  genuinely  and  as  spontaneously 
as  nowadays  people  are  delighted  by  sensational  novels,  or 
plays  from  the  French.  Scholarly  criticism  had  not  yet 
murdered  spontaneous  appreciation.  The  Transcendental 
youth  of  New  England  delighted  in  excellent  modern  litera 
ture  and  excellent  modern  music  as  unaffectedly  as  fifteenth- 
century  Italians  delighted  in  the  freshly  discovered  manuscripts 
of  classic  Greek. 

At  the  same  time  these  Transcendentalists  were  native 
Yankees  ;  and  true  native  Yankees  always  yearn  for  abso 
lute  truth.  A  characteristic  result  followed  ;  they  really  de- 


298     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

lighted  in  literature  with  all  the  fervour  of  a  race  which  had 
been  aesthetically  starved  for  five  or  six  generations  ;  with 
equal  fervour  they  believed  their  interest  in  literature  to  be 
largely  conditioned  by  the  fact  that  literature  can  teach  us 
how  we  ought  to  behave. 

In  the  second  number  of  the  u  Dial "  is  a  paper,  attributed 
to  Emerson,  which  oddly  illustrates  this.  He  speaks  of  doubts 
which  may  linger  concerning  the  excellence  of  the  age  in  which 
he  has  the  good  fortune  to  flourish ;  and  goes  on  thus  :  — 

"  How  can  the  age  be  a  bad  one  which  gives  me  Plato  and  Paul 
and  Plutarch,  Saint  Augustine,  Spinoza,  Chapman,  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  Donne,  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  beside  its  own  riches?  " 

Whether  Emerson  wrote  this  passage  or  not,  his  collected 
works  teem  with  similar  evidence  of  his  guileless  confusion  of 
values,  a  trait  strongly  characteristic  of  our  earlier  Renais 
sance.  His  father  and  his  grandfather,  and  those  who  had 
gone  before,  had  known  their  Bibles,  their  Latin  classics,  and 
perhaps  a  little  Greek,  had  had  fairly  distinct  notions  of  the 
Common  Law,  and  had  regarded  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  if 
they  had  ever  heard  of  them,  as  sinfully  obscene  playwrights. 
Emerson,  turning  to  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  found  what  is 
truly  there,  —  many  examples  of  noble  and  beautiful  Eliza 
bethan  aphorism.  He  might  equally  have  found  what  his 
ancestral  tradition  emphasised,  endless  depths  of  corruption  ; 
but  these  did  not  attract  his  attention.  The  inner  light  told 
him  that  the  beauties  were  virtues  and  the  basenesses  faults. 
He  chose  to  regard  the  beauty  as  essential,  the  baseness  as 
accidental ;  and  in  his  admiration  for  the  superb  phrasing  of 
decadent  Elizabethan  dramatists  he  threw  them  into  the  same 
category  with  Plato  and  Augustine,  in  a  temper  much  like  that 
which  has  made  dogmatic  theology  group  the  Song  of  Solo 
mon  with  the  Epistles  of  the  apostle  Paul. 

By   1832  a  considerable  group   of  Transcendentalists  had 
arisen  in  Boston,  agreeing  in  little  else  than  the  eager  scope  of 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  299 

their  interest  and  investigations,  and  their  desire  to  attain  ab 
solute  truth  by  other  means  than  that  of  previously  accepted 
authority.  In  a  certain  aspect,  as  we  have  seen,  their  impulse 
closely  resembled  that  of  the  Unitarians  half  a  generation  be 
fore.  It  may  be  distinguished  from  Unitarianism,  however,  by 
its  unrestrained  ardour.  In  this  the  Transcendentalists  un 
wittingly  reverted  to  the  old  native  type.  With  the  Unitarians 
they  held,  though  not  literally,  that  man  is  made  in  God's 
image.  Very  well :  God,  morally  perfect,  has  only  to  look 
within  Himself  and  know  what  is  true  and  right ;  let  us, 
made  in  His  image,  do  likewise.  Truth  and  Right  are  ab 
solute  things  ;  we  shall  find  them  within  ourselves,  and  from 
their  deepest  essential  nature  they  cannot  mislead  us.  The 
Puritans,  of  course,  had  strenuously  denied  any  such  dogma 
as  this ;  the  light  which  God  vouchsafed  to  them  was  vouch 
safed  through  no  secret  faculties  of  their  forlornly  lost  human 
nature,  but  only  in  scriptural  phrases,  which  must  be  duly 
interpreted  by  orthodox  parsons.  During  the  heyday  of  the 
Puritans,  however,  there  had  flourished  a  kind  of  spiritual 
thinkers  as  like  them  in  temperament  as  they  were  different  in 
doctrine,  and  therefore  held  the  most  dangerous  of  heretics. 
These  were  the  Quakers,  like  Woolman,  who  measured  truth 
by  that  inner  light  which  they  believed  that  the  grace  of  God 
vouchsafes  to  every  human  being.  The  Transcendentalists 
were  too  far  from  orthodox  to  trouble  themselves  about  a 
Christian  God,  but  they  believed  in  the  inner  light  as  enthusi 
astically  as  ever  Quakers  did,  and  they  followed  it  almost  as 
ardently. 

The  intensity  of  their  emotional  nature  not  only  distin 
guished  them  from  contemporary  Unitarians,  but  carried 
them  to  greater  lengths  than  even  their  Puritan  ancestors. 
When  Unitarians  got  beyond  the  range  of  human  senses,  they 
phrased  the  unknowable  almost  as  conventionally  as  the  Puri 
tans  themselves,  talking  of  God,  of  Heaven,  of  Hell ;  and  so 
did  the  Quakers.  The  Transcendentalists,  with  all  the  en- 


300     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

franchisee!  ardour  of  revolutionary  temper,  talked  rather  about 
Nature  and  the  Over-Soul ;  and  instead  of  yielding  enthusi 
astic  assent  to  the  divinely  implanted  authority  of  conscience, 
they  found  that  the  ideas  innate  in  the  human  soul  and  spirit 
gave  warrant  enough  for  unquestioning  belief  in  the  un 
fathomable  truths  which  they  so  boldly  proclaimed. 

In  one  way  or  another  this  Transcendental  movement 
affected  almost  all  the  ardent  natures  of  New  England  from 
1825  to  1840.  In  that  year  it  found  final  expression  in  the 
"Dial,"  a  quarterly  periodical  which  flourished  until  1844. 
Its  first  editor  was  among  the  most  characteristic  figures  of 
Transcendentalism.  This  was  a  woman,  regarded  in  her 
own  time  as  the  prophetess  of  the  new  movement,  and  pre 
vented  by  a  comparatively  early  death  from  struggling  through 
days  when  the  movement  had  spent  its  force. 

Sarah  Margaret  Fuller,  daughter  of  an  eccentric  but  very 
assertive  citizen  of  Cambridge,  was  born  in  1810.  Educated 
by  her  father  according  to  his  own  ideas,  she  was  much  over- 
stimulated  in  youth,  and  grew  into  something  which  impressed 
people  who  disliked  her  as  intellectual  monstrosity.  She  was 
early  a  teacher  and  a  writer.  She  contracted  with  Emer 
son  a  Platonically  intimate  friendship,  of  which  the  records 
enliven  the  humours  of  this  period.  And  among  her  most 
characteristic  proceedings  was  a  series  of  conversations  to 
which  for  a  year  or  two  she  invited  people  to  subscribe.  The 
subscribers  were  duly  admitted  to  her  small  drawing-room, 
where  she  proceeded  to  talk  about  all  manner  of  literary  and 
intellectual  things,  until  you  could  hardly  tell  whether  she 
were  more  like  an  unsexed  version  of  Plato's  Socrates  or  a 
Yankee  Lyceum  lecturer.  In  1840  she  became  editor  of  the 
"Dial."  In  1842  she  relinquished  the  editorship  to  Emerson, 
and  removed  to  New  York.  Horace  Greeley,  whose  sym 
pathy  with  New  England  reformers  was  always  encouraging, 
had  invited  her  to  become  the  literary  critic  of  the  New 
York  «  Tribune." 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 


301 


Two  years  later  she  went  abroad.  Up  to  this  time  the 
records  of  her  life  indicate  deficiency  of  passion.  In  the 
little  time  which  followed,  her  passion  so  asserted  itself  that, 
had  she  survived,  her  later  work  might  have  been  surpris 
ingly  different  from  what  she  actually  left  us.  She  strayed 
to  Italy,  where  in  the  revolutionary  times  of  1847  sne  married 
a  gentleman  named  Ossoli,  an  Italian  patriot  some  years 
younger  than  she.  The  marriage  was  kept  secret,  amid  the 
stormy  hopes  and  fears  of  reviving  Italy,  until  her  approach 
to  confinement  compelled  her  to  admit  it.  She  was  in  Rome 
during  the  siege  of  1848,  and  two  years  later  started  for 
America  with  her  husband,  virtually  an  exile,  and  her  child. 
The  ship  on  which  they  were  journeying  was  wrecked  off 
Fire  Island;  all  three  were  lost. 

An  obviously  extravagant  legend  about  her  indicates  at  once 
something  of  how  Transcendentalists  presented  themselves  to 
other  people  and  perhaps  a  little  of  their  real  temper.  As  we 
may  remember,  one  of  the  poems  which  Poe  approvingly 
remarked  among  those  of  the  New  York  Literati  was  written 
by  a  certain  Mrs.  Osgood  about  Fanny  Ellsler.  This  same 
Fanny  Ellsler  danced  in  Boston ;  and  there  is  said  to  be  in  the 
"  Dial "  a  grave  argument  that  in  spite  of  her  personal  errors 
it  was  morally  permissible  to  see  and  admire  her  performances 
as  an  artist.  The  story  runs  that,  in  obedience  to  this  moral 
right  and  aesthetic  duty,  Emerson  and  Margaret  Fuller  went 
together  to  see  the  most  accomplished  ballet-dancer  of  the 
'40*8.  Neither  of  them  had  ever  seen  a  ballet  before;  neither 
knew  quite  what  to  expect.  The  dance  began;  both  sat 
serenely  silent ;  at  last  Emerson  spoke.  "  Margaret,"  he  said, 
"this  is  poetry."  "No,  Waldo,"  replied  Margaret,  "it  is 
not  poetry,  it  is  religion." 

This  Margaret  Fuller  was  the  first  editor  of  the  "  Dial." 
Its  precise  purpose  is  hard  to  state ;  it  may  best  be  grouped 
with  that  little  company  of  evanescent  periodicals,  which  now 
and  then  endeavour  to  afford  everybody  a  full  opportunity 


302     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

to  say  anything.  The  deepest  agreement  of  Transcendental 
ism  was  in  the  conviction  that  the  individual  has  a  natural 
right  to  believe  for  himself  and  freely  to  express  his  belief. 
In  a  community  so  dominated  by  tradition  as  New  England, 
meanwhile,  a  community  of  which  the  most  characteristic 
periodical  up  to  this  time  had  been  the  "North  American  Re 
view,"  freedom  of  speech  in  print,  though  not  theoretically 
denied,  was  hardly  practicable.  With  a  mission  little  more 
limited  than  this  ideal  of  freedom,  the  "  Dial "  started. 

The  cover  of  the  first  number  was  distinguished  by  a  single 
advertisement,  —  that  of  Mr.  Jacob  Abbott's  Rollo  books,  then 
publishing  by  the  same  printer.  This  happy  accident  can 
hardly  fail  to  suggest  the  reflection  that  Rollo  was  the  body 
of  which  Transcendentalism  was  the  soul.  Whoever  wishes 
to  know  the  external  aspect  of  the  period  now  in  question 
will  waste  none  of  the  moments  which  he  may  devote  to  Mr. 
Abbott's  luminous  pages.  Nor  will  time  be  wasted  which 
those  whose  curiosity  is  less  centred  on  phenomena  may  find 
themselves  able  to  give  to  the  "  Dial "  itself.  For  though 
the  "Dial"  was  impractical,  never  circulated  much,  and 
within  four  years  came  to  a  hopeless  financial  end,  its  pages 
are  at  once  more  interesting  and  more  sensible  than  tradition 
has  represented  them.  Of  the  writers,  to  be  sure,  few  have 
proved  immortal.  Bronson  Alcott  and  Theodore  Parker 
seem  fading  with  Margaret  Fuller  into  mere  memories ; 
and  George  Ripley  has  become  more  nebulous  still. 
But  Thoreau  was  of  the  company ;  and  so  was  Emerson,  who 
bids  fair  to  survive  the  rest  much  as  Shakspere  has  survived 
the  other  Elizabethan  dramatists. 

This  is  perhaps  what  now  makes  the  "  Dial "  most  signifi 
cant.  No  eminent  literary  figure  can  grow  into  existence 
without  a  remarkable  environment ;  and  as  the  pages  of  the 
"  Dial  "  gradually  reveal  what  the  environment  of  Emerson's 
most  active  years  was,  it  proves  on  the  whole  more  vigorous 
than  you  would  have  been  apt  to  expect.  Its  vigour,  however, 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  303 

appears  more  plainly  in  the  earlier  volumes  of  the  u  Dial " 
than  in  the  later.  Up  to  the  time  when  the  periodical  was 
founded,  the  general  temper  for  which  it  stands  had  been 
gathering  force.  Merely  as  literature,  then,  the  first  two 
or  three  numbers  are  surprisingly  good.  As  you  turn  the 
pages  of  the  later  numbers  you  are  sensible  of  disintegration. 
The  thought  tends  to  grow  more  vague ;  the  kinds  of  reform 
which  interest  people  grow  more  various  and  wilder ;  and, 
above  all,  the  tendency,  so  fatal  to  periodical  literature,  of 
running  to  inordinate  length,  becomes  more  and  more  evi 
dent.  You  begin  to  feel  as  if  each  writer  would  have  liked 
to  write  the  whole  thing  himself.  The  "  Dial  "  begins  with 
an  auroral  glow,  which  soon  fades  into  a  rather  bewildering 
mist.  From  beginning  to  end,  however,  it  is  fresh  in  feel 
ing,  wide  in  scope,  earnest  in  its  search  for  truth,  and  less 
eccentric  than  you  would  have  thought  possible.  For  all  its 
ultimate  failure,  it  leaves  a  final  impression  not  only  of  auroral 
hopefulness,  but  of  moral  sanity. 

Tradition  has  remembered  about  it  chiefly  such  oddities  as 
the  u  Orphic  Sayings"  of  Bronson  Alcott, —  "awful  sayings," 
they  have  since  been  called,  in  days  when  the  adjective  "  awful" 
had  attained  its  cant  meaning.  There  is  room  for  grave  doubt 
whether  Alcott  ever  knew  what  some  of  them  meant;  certainly 
no  one  else  ever  knew,  and  for  many  years  no  one  has  wanted 
to  know.  Tradition  has  remembered,  too,  Emerson's  ten 
dency  in  the  later  numbers  to  lay  before  the  world  the  inspired 
truths  of  other  scriptures  than  the  Christian,  —  Chinese,  In 
dian,  whatever  else.  At  the  same  time  tradition  has  forgotten 
the  more  solid  and  contemporary  stuff  that  appeared  there.  In 
the  second  number,  for  example,  among  other  things,  Mr. 
George  Ripley  has  much  to  say  about  that  Unitarian  ortho 
doxy  against  which  Channing  himself  was  protesting ;  and 
in  the  course  of  his  article  Ripley  uses  concerning  his  awak 
ened  New  England  the  words  "  new  life,"  in  just  the  sense 
in  which  we  have  found  the  word  "Renaissance"  so  truly 


304     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

to  express  the  spirit  of  the  moment.  A  little  later  a  writer 
believed  to  be  Margaret  Fuller  expounds  that  Christianity  is  a 
prison;  not  long  afterwards  Theodore  Parker,  remembered 
as  the  most  radical  of  the  divines  who  still  called  themselves 
Unitarian,  stoutly  insists  on  the  inexpressible  merit  of  Christ 
as  an  example.  In  subsequent  numbers  of  the  first  year 
there  are  articles  on  abolition,  —  a  movement  which  logi 
cally  enlisted  the  sympathies  of  almost  all  who  were  affected 
by  the  Transcendental  movement ;  and  Theodore  Parker, 
radical  from  beginning  to  end,  has  some  thoughts  on  labour 
by  no  means  welcome  to  his  conservative  contemporaries. 
In  the  later  volumes  theoretical  socialism  comes  more  and 
more  to  the  front,  and  there  is  a  good  deal  about  the  com 
munity  at  Brook  Farm  in  which  a  considerable  number  of 
Transcendentalists  found  material  expression  for  their  en 
thusiasm.  Along  with  such  articles  as  these  there  is  much 
poetry,  on  the  whole  worth  reading.  Little  of  it  is  excellent ; 
the  best  of  course  is  Emerson's,  mostly  reprinted  again  and 
again.  If  not  great,  however,  the  poetry  of  the  u  Dial  "  is 
genuine,  —  a  sincere  effort  on  the  part  of  increasingly  culti 
vated  people  earnestly  and  beautifully  to  phrase  emotions  which 
in  their  freshly  enfranchised  New  England  they  truly  felt. 

Though  the  u  Dial "  had  little  positive  cohesion,  its  writers 
and  all  the  Transcendentalists,  of  whom  we  may  take  them  as 
representative,  were  almost  at  one  as  ardent  opponents  of  life 
less  traditions.  Generally  idealists,  and  believers  in  innate 
ideas,  they  were  stirred  to  emotional  fervour  by  their  detesta 
tion  of  any  stiffening  orthodoxy,  even  though  that  orthodoxy 
were  so  far  from  dogmatic  as  Yankee  Unitarianism.  And 
naturally  passing  from  things  of  the  mind  and  the  soul  to 
things  of  that  very  palpable  part  of  human  nature,  the  body, 
they  found  themselves  generally  eager  to  alter  the  affairs  of 
this  world  for  the  better.  If  any  one  word  could  certainly 
arouse  their  sympathetic  enthusiasm,  it  was  the  word  "re 
form." 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 


305 


Whoever  at  any  moment  contemplates  life  is  bound  to 
find  many  displeasing  things.  He  is  bound  to  find  at  the 
same  time  a  perceptible  infusion  of  merit  and  virtue.  Thus 
contemplating  the  mazed  and  confusing  panorama  of  exist 
ence,  some  people  shrink  from  any  effort  radically  to  alter 
the  condition  of  human  affairs;  for  bad  as  things  are, alteration 
may  by  chance  involve  more  destruction  of  good  than  sup 
pression  of  evil.  To  reformers,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
darker  aspect  of  actual  affairs  seems  the  more  conspicuous* 
They  are  always  for  putting  down  the  evil,  trusting  that  the 
good  shall  survive  by  its  inherent  strength  ;  and  when  reform 
takes  up  arms,  we  have  revolutions.  Transcendentalists  never 
thought  of  resorting  to  arms  ;  but  they  did  eagerly  inspect  life, 
and  finding  there  many  unsatisfactory  things,  they  eagerly 
welcomed  any  effort  to  make  things  better,  without  much 
question  as  to  how  practicable  that  effort  was,  or  as  to  what 
it  might  incidentally  destroy.  A  glance  at  the  contents  of 
the  u  Dial "  will  accordingly  show  that  the  periodical  fervently 
advocated  two  distinct  reforms.  The  more  specific,  which 
reached  its  highest  development  later,  was  the  abolition  of 
slavery,  a  measure  important  enough  in  the  intellectual  history 
of  New  England  to  deserve  separate  discussion.  The  more 
general,  which  developed,  flourished,  and  failed  decidedly  before 
the  antislavery  movement  became  a  political  force,  was  that 
effort  to  reform  the  structure  of  society  which  found  expres 
sion  in  the  community  of  Brook  Farm  near  Boston. 

In  1841,  a  number  of  people,  —  all  in  sympathy  with  the 
Transcendentalists,  and  most  of  them  writers  for  the  "  Dial,"  — 
among  the  more  conspicuous  of  whom  were  Mr.  George  Rip- 
ley,  Mr.  Charles  Anderson  Dana,  and  Mr.  John  Sullivan 
Dwight,  bought  a  farm  ten  or  twelve  miles  from  Boston. 
Here  they  proposed  to  found  an  ideal  community,  where 
everybody  should  work  to  support  the  establishment  and 
where  there  should  be  plenty  of  leisure  for  scholarly  and 
edifying  pleasure.  Incidentally  there  was  to  be  a  school, 

20 


3o6     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

where  children  from  their  earliest  years  were  to  give  their 
infantile  help  in  the  work  of  the  community.  The  experi 
ment  began.  At  least  during  its  earlier  years,  Brook  Farm 
attracted  considerable  notice,  and  the  sympathetic  attention  of 
many  people  afcerward  more  eminent  than  its  actual  mem 
bers.  Hawthorne  came  thither  for  a  while,  and  his  "  Blithe- 
dale  Romance  "  is  an  idealised  picture  of  the  establishment. 
Emerson,  though  never  an  actual  member,  was  there  off  and 
Qn,  always  with  shrewd,  kindly  interest.  Thither,  too,  occa 
sionally  came  Margaret  Fuller,  in  whom  some  have  discovered 
the  original  of  Hawthorne's  Zenobia.  But  if  Margaret  Fuller 
really  suggested  Zenobia,  Zenobia  is  probably  Hawthorne's 
most  wonderful  creation.  For  Zenobia  is  profoundly  femi 
nine  ;  and  whatever  else  poor  Margaret  Fuller  seems,  at  least 
until  after  her  passionate  marriage,  she  seems  so  lost  in 
Transcendental  abstraction  that  nothing  short  of  genius  could 
connect  with  her  the  idea  of  sex. 

Brook  Farm,  of  course,  was  only  a  Yankee  expression  of 
the  world-old  impulse  to  get  rid  of  evil  by  establishing  life  on 
principles  different  from  those  of  economic  law.  From  earliest 
times,  theoretical  writers  have  proposed  various  forms  of  com 
munistic  existence  as  a  solution  of  the  problems  presented 
by  the  sin  and  suffering  of  human  beings  in  any  dense  popu 
lation.  The  writer  whose  principles  most  definitely  affected 
Brook  Farm  in  its  later  development  was  Fourier,  a  French 
philosopher,  who  sketched  out  a  rather  elaborate  ideal  society. 
The  basis  of  his  system  was  that  people  should  separate  them 
selves  into  phalanxes  of  no  considerable  numbers,  and  that 
each  phalanx  should  be  mutually  helpful  and  self-supporting. 
This  conception  so  commended  itself  to  the  Brook  Farmers 
that,  at  an  expense  decidedly  beyond  their  means,  they  actu 
ally  built  a  phalanstery,  or  communal  residence,  as  nearly  as 
might  be  on  the  lines  which  Fourier  suggested. 

What  marked  the  peculiarly  Yankee  character  of  the 
Brook  Farmers,  was  their  calm  disregard  of  a  vital  point  in 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  307 

Fourier's  system.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  consider 
able  part  of  human  unhappiness  is  caused  by  the  loves  of 
men  and  women.  This  phase  of  unhappiness  some  theorists 
would  avoid  by  lifelong  celibacy.  Fourier  less  austerely 
avoided  it  by  introducing  into  his  phalansteric  system  a 
decent  variety  of  free  love,  whereby  adult  men  and  women 
should  be  permitted  to  live  together  as  long  as  they  found 
it  mutually  agreeable,  and  to  separate  without  inconvenient 
formalities  whenever  mutually  so  inclined,  thus  perpetuating 
an  ideal  race  in  obedience  to  unimpeded  affinities  of  nature. 
When  the  Brook  Farmers  arrived  at  this  phase  of  Fourier's 
applied  philosophy,  they  simply  ignored  it.  Cynical  con 
temporaries  rather  looked  for  a  development  of  free  love  in 
a  community  whose  principles  so  clearly  involved  this  form 
of  freedom  as  well  as  those  which  they  openly  advocated. 
Nothing  of  the  kind  appeared.  However  absurd,  however 
eccentric  and  irritating,  Brook  Farm  may  have  seemed  to 
people  of  strong  sense,  it  passed  from  beginning  to  end 
without  scandal.  People  who  were  married  lived  there  as 
respectable  married  people  should  ;  unmarried  people  lived  there 
with  all  that  unaffected  purity  of  personal  life  which  is  so 
generally  characteristic  of  the  better  classes  throughout  America. 
The  same  native  trait  which  appears  in  the  absence  of  lubricity 
from  American  writings  appears  again  in  the  fact  that  at 
Brook  Farm,  freely  given  over  to  theoretical  socialism  and 
to  the  teachings  of  Fourier,  men  and  women  lived  sweet, 
clean  lives.  You  might  have  watched  them  throughout  the 
seven  years  of  their  communal  existence,  you  might  have 
listened  to  every  word  which  they  uttered  about  the  teach 
ings  of  their  revered  French  apostle;  but  unless  you  had 
turned  to  Fourier's  own  writings,  you  would  never  have 
found  reason  to  suspect  that  among  his  teachings  was  the 
doctrine  of  free  love. 

Brook  Farm  inevitably  went  to  pieces.     Its  members  were 
not  skilled  enough  in  agriculture  to  make  farming  pay ;  they 


3o8     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

found  manual  labour  too  exhausting  to  permit  much  activity 
of  mind  in  the  considerable  leisure  which  their  system  afforded 
them ;  they  discovered  no  new  truths ;  and  incidentally  they 
discerned  with  more  and  more  certainty  that  when  you  get 
together  even  so  small  a  company  of  human  beings  as  are 
comprised  in  one  of  Fourier's  phalanxes,  you  cannot  avoid 
uncomfortable  incompatibility  of  temper.  In  1847  tne^r  new 
phalanstery,  which  had  cost  ten  thousand  dollars  and  had 
almost  exhausted  their  funds,  was  burned  down ;  it  was 
not  insured,  and  before  long  the  whole  community  had  to 
break  up. 

The  "  Dial "  had  come  to  its  innocent  end  three  years 
before.  Transcendentalism  proved  unable  long  to  express 
itself  in  any  coherent  form.  Yet  many  of  those  who  were 
connected  with  it  never  relapsed  into  commonplace.  Emerson's 
career  we  shall  consider  in  a  little  detail,  and  Hawthorne's,  too, 
when  the  time  comes.  Margaret  Fuller  hardly  survived  the 
period  of  which  she  was  so  conspicuous  an  ornament ;  when 
Brook  Farm  faded  away,  she  was  already  in  Italy.  She  had 
gone  thither  by  way  of  New  York,  whither  she  had  been  in 
vited  by  Mr.  Horace  Greeley's  sympathy  with  all  sorts  of 
New  England  reform.  Greeley  also  had  something  to  do 
with  the  settlement  in  New  York  of  two  eminent  Brook 
Farmers.  One  was  Mr.  George  Ripley,  perhaps  the  chief 
spirit  of  the  community.  He  began  life  as  a  Unitarian 
minister,  and  with  the  possible  exception  of  Theodore  Parker 
was  the  most  cultivated  Boston  divine  of  his  day.  He 
found  even  the  Unitarian  ministry  too  narrow  in  its  ortho 
doxy.  When  Brook  Farm  proved  impracticable,  he  became 
the  literary  critic  of  the  New  York  "  Tribune,"  with  which 
he  retained  his  connection  to  the  end  of  a  long  and  honour 
able  life.  His  wife,  who  began  in  ardent  sympathy  with  him, 
became  a  devout  Roman  Catholic.  Mr.  Ripley  himself 
developed  into  a  completely  free-thinking  and  agreeably 
accomplished  man  of  the  world.  Mr.  Charles  Dana,  too,  was 


TRANSCENDENTALISM  309 

for  a  while  connected  with  the  "  Tribune."  After  a  varied 
career,  he  finally  became  editor  of  the  New  York  "Sun," 
which  in  his  day  enjoyed  the  reputation  of  being  at  once  the  most 
unprincipled  and  the  most  readable  newspaper  in  America. 
Mr.  George  William  Curtis  became  associated  with  the 
periodicals  published  by  the  Harpers,  maintaining  more  of  the 
purely  ideal  quality  of  his  early  days.  Mr.  Dwight  returned 
to  Boston,  where,  as  editor  of  the  "  Journal  of  Music,"  he 
did  rather  more  than  any  one  else  to  make  the  city  what  it  is 
now  acknowledged  to  be, —  a  vital  centre  of  musical  art. 
And  so  in  various  ways  Brook  Farm  faded  into  a  memory, 
but  one  which  always  remained  dear  to  those  who  knew  the 
dreamy  old  days  as  they  flitted  through  the  sunshine.  For 
though  in  one  sense  the  movement  came  to  nothing,  it  was  an 
earnest,  sincere,  beautiful  effort  to  make  human  life  better  by 
practising  the  principles  of  ideal  truth.  Brook  Farm  was 
typical  of  all  Transcendentalism.  It  had  a  bright  beginning, 
a  rather  bewildering  adolescence,  and  a  confused,  misty  end ; 
but  it  left  no  one  the  worse  for  its  influence. 

This  New  England  Transcendentalism  developed  most 
vigorously  in  those  years  when  the  intellectual  life  of  New 
York  was  embodied  in  the  Knickerbocker  school  of  writers. 
By  contrasting  these  two  neighbouring  phases  of  thought 
we  can  see  how  unalterably  New  England  kept  the  trace  of 
its  Puritan  origin,  eagerly  aspiring  to  knowledge  of  absolute 
truth.  The  literature  of  the  Knickerbocker  school  was  never 
more  than  a  literature  of  pleasure.  Even  the  lesser  literature 
of  Transcendentalism,  not  to  speak  of  its  permanent  phases, 
constantly  and  earnestly  aspired  to  be  a  literature  of  both 
knowledge  and  power,  seeking  in  the  eternities  for  new  ranges 
of  truth  which  should  broaden,  sweeten,  strengthen,  and  purify 
mankind. 

In  brief,  just  as  Unitarianism  represents  the  temporary 
orthodoxy  of  renascent  New  England,  Transcendentalism 
represents  its  vagrant  spiritual  philosophy.  Mr.  Cabot,  in  his 


310     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

biography  of  Emerson,  calls  the  movement  an  outburst  of 
Romanticism  j  by  u  Romanticism  "  he  means  something  very 
like  what  we  have  called  the  revolutionary  spirit,  —  a  phase 
of  that  world  movement  which  had  shown  itself  in  Europe 
more  than  a  generation  before.  On  Continental  Europe 
this  had  expressed  itself  in  the  excesses  of  the  French  Revo 
lution.  In  England  it  had  expressed  itself  in  that  outburst 
of  romantic  poetry  which  made  the  first  third  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  a  distinct  epoch  in  English  letters.  The 
human  nature  of  New  England  meanwhile  asserted  its  inde 
pendence  of  tradition  in  the  vagaries  of  an  ideal  philosophy, 
and  in  a  fervid  assertion  of  the  right  of  individuals  to  seek 
truth  each  for  himself.  This  enfranchised  Yankee  human 
nature  may  perhaps  seem  vague,  untutored,  far  from  wise; 
but  whatever  its  errors,  and  whatever  the  limits  of  its  good 
sense,  one  fact  about  Transcendentalism  must  be  evident 
even  to  those  who  are  most  sensible  of  its  humourous 
aspect.  Throughout  it  was  aspiring  ;  and  its  aspiration  had 
a  touch  of  almost  unearthly  sweetness  and  purity.  The 
old  dogmas  of  the  Puritans  had  taught  that  uncontrolled 
human  nature  must  instantly  reveal  itself  as  damnable.  To 
any  honest  mind  the  human  nature  of  nineteenth-century  New 
England,  in  the  first  enfranchisement  of  Transcendentalism, 
must  seem  as  far  from  damnable  as  if  damnation  had  never 
darkened  the  dreams  of  humanity. 


VI 

RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON 

As  time  passes,  it  grows  more  and  more  clear  that  by  far  the 
most  eminent  figure  among  the  Transcendentalists,  if  not 
indeed  in  all  the  literary  history  of  America,  was  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson.  Born  at  Boston  in  1803,  and  descended  from  a 
long  line  of  ministers,  he  was  as  truly  a  New  England  Brahmin 
as  was  Cotton  Mather,  a  century  and  a  half  before.  His 
father  was  minister  of  the  First  Church  of  Boston,  already 
Unitarian,  but  still  maintaining  unbroken  the  organisation 
which  had  been  founded  by  John  Cotton  at  the  settlement  of 
the  town.  The  elder  Emerson  died  early.  His  sons  were 
brought  up  in  poverty ;  but  they  belonged  on  both  sides  to 
that  hereditary  clerical  class  whose  distinction  was  still  inde 
pendent  of  so  material  an  accident  as  fortune.  In  1821  Waldo 
Emerson  graduated  from  Harvard  College,  where,  as  his 
"  Notes  on  Life  and  Letters  in  New  England "  record,  the 
teaching  of  Edward  Everett  was  filling  the  air  with  renascent 
enthusiasm.  After  graduation  Emerson  supported  himself  for 
a  few  years  by  school-teaching,  studying  meanwhile  his  heredi 
tary  profession  of  divinity.  In  1829  he  was  made  colleague 
to  the  Reverend  Henry  Ware,  Jr.,  pastor  of  the  Second 
Church  in  Boston.  This  was  the  church  which  had  re 
mained  for  above  sixty  years  in  charge  of  the  Mathers.  His 
ministerial  career,  then,  began  in  lineal  succession  to  Cotton 
Mather's  own.  Mr.  Ware,  infirm  in  health,  soon  resigned  ; 
and  before  Emerson  was  thirty  years  old,  he  had  become  the 
regular  minister  of  the  Second  Church. 


3i2     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

On  the  9th  of  September,  1832,  he  preached  there  the 
sermon  which  brought  his  pastoral  career  to  a  close.  The 
subject  was  the  Lord's  Supper,  and  his  text  was  :  "  The  king 
dom  of  God  is  not  meat  and  drink,  but  righteousness  and 
peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost.  Rom.  xiv.  17." —  "In 
the  history  of  the  Church,"  he  begins,  "  no  subject  has  been 
more  fruitful  of  controversy  than  the  Lord's  Supper.  There 
never  has  been  any  unanimity  in  the  understanding  of  its 
nature,  nor  any  uniformity  in  the  mode  of  celebrating  it." 
He  goes  on  with  a  long  paragraph  stating  various  divergencies 
of  custom  in  sacramental  observance,  and  then  proceeds  :  — 

"  I  allude  to  these  facts  only  to  show  that,  so  far  from  the  supper 
being  a  tradition  in  which  men  are  fully  agreed,  there  has  always  been 
the  widest  room  for  difference  of  opinions  upon  this  particular.  Hav 
ing  recently  given  particular  attention  to  this  subject,  I  was  led  to  the 
conclusion  that  Jesus  did  not  intend  to  establish  an  institution  for 
perpetual  observance  when  he  ate  the  Passover  with  his  disciples; 
and,  further,  to  the  opinion,  that  it  is  not  expedient  to  celebrate  it  the 
way  we  do." 

The  body  of  the  sermon  is  devoted  to  a  cool  statement  of 
his  reasons  for  this  conclusion  and  opinion ;  and  at  the  end 
comes  the  decision  at  which  he  had  arrived  :  — 

"Influenced  by  these  considerations,  I  have  proposed  to  the 
brethren  of  the  Church  to  drop  the  use  of  the  elements  and  the 
claim  of  authority  in  the  administration  of  this  ordinance,  and  have 
suggested  a  mode  in  which  a  meeting  for  the  same  purpose  might  be 
held,  free  of  objection. 

"My  brethren  have  considered  my  views  with  patience  and  candour, 
and  have  recommended,  unanimously,  an  adherence  to  the  present 
form.  I  have  therefore  been  compelled  to  consider  whether  it  be 
comes  me  to  administer  it.  I  am  clearly  of  the  opinion  I  ought  not. 
This  discourse  has  already  been  so  far  extended  that  I  can  only  say 
that  the  reason  of  my  determination  is  shortly  this :  —  It  is  my  desire, 
in  the  office  of  a  Christian  minister,  to  do  nothing  which  I  cannot  do 
with  my  whole  heart.  Having  said  this,  I  have  said  all.  I  have  no 
hostility  to  this  institution ;  I  am  only  stating  my  want  of  sympathy 
with  it.  Neither  should  I  ever  have  obtruded  this  opinion  upon  other 
people,  had  I  not  been  called  by  my  office  to  administer  it.  That  is 


EMERSON  313 

the  end  of  my  opposition,  that  I  am  not  interested  in  it.  I  am  con 
tent  that  it  stand  to  the  end  of  the  world,  if  it  please  men  and  please 
Heaven,  and  I  shall  rejoice  in  all  the  good  it  produces." 

"  I  am  content  that  it  should  stand  to  the  end  of  the 
world,"  but  "I  am  not  interested  in  it,"  —  that  is  the  view 
expressed  of  the  holiest  mystery  of  Christianity  by  a  man  who 
stood  for  three  years  in  the  pulpit  of  Cotton  Mather.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  the  whole  literature  of  heresy  contains  two 
phrases  which  to  any  mind  still  affected  by  traditional  Chris 
tian  faith  must  seem  more  saturated  with  serene  insolence. 

Serenely  insolent,  at  least  to  orthodox  Christians,  Emerson 
remained  all  his  life.  This  life  was  far  from  eventful.  After 
giving  up  his  pastorate  he  supported  himself  as  a  lecturer, 
occasionally  preaching.  He  went  abroad  for  a  year,  begin 
ning  that  friendship  with  Carlyle  which  resulted  in  their  life 
long  correspondence.  In  1836  appeared  his  first  book, 
^J^jaiure,"  beautiful,  serene,  obscure,  stimulating,  permeated 
with  the  idealism  which  was  the  basis  of  his  philosophy.  In 
1837  he  gave,  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  of  Harvard 
College,  his  celebrated  address  on  "  The  American  Scholar," 
of  which  the  closing  paragraph  is  among  the  most  articulate 
assertions  of  his  individualism  :  — 

"  If  the  single  man  plant  himself  indomitably  on  his  instincts,  and 
there  abide,  the  huge  world  will  come  round  to  him.  Patience,— 
patience  ;  with  the  shades  of  all  the  good  and  great  for  company;  and 
for  solace  the  perspective  of  your  own  infinite  life;  and  for  work  the 
study  and  communication  of  principles,  the  making  those  instincts 
prevalent,  the  conversion  of  the  world.  Is  it  not  the  chief  disgrace  in 
the  world  not  to  be  an  unit;  —  not  to  be  reckoned  one  character;  — 
not  to  yield  that  peculiar  fruit  which  each  man  was  created  to  bear, 
but  to  be  reckoned  in  the  gross,  in  the  hundred,  or  the  thousand,  of 
the  party,  the  section,  to  which  we  belong;  and  our  opinion  predicted 
geographically,  as  the  north  or  the  south?  Not  so,  brothers  and 
friends, — please  God,  ours  shall  not  be  so.  We  will  walk  on  our  own 
feet;  we  will  work  with  our  own  hands  ;  we  will  speak  our  own  minds. 
The  study  of  letters  shall  no  longer  be  a  name  for  pity,  for  doubt,  and 
for  sensual  indulgence.  The  dread  of  man  and  the  love  of  man  shall 
be  a  wall  of  defence  and  a  wreath  of  joy  around  all.  A  nation  of  men 


3 1 4     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

will  for  the  first  time  exist,  because  each  believes  himself  inspired  by 
the  Divine  Soul  which  also  inspires  all  men." 

In  the  following  year,  his  address  before  the  Divinity 
School  at  Cambridge  carried  his  gospel  of  individualism  to  a 
point  which  staggered  even  that  heretical  seminaiy.  Full  of 
theoretical  liberalism,  its  authorities  had  deliberately  invited 
to  their  baccalaureate  pulpit  a  self-disfrocked  divine,  who  had 
discarded  the  Lord's  Supper  because  he  happened  not  to  find 
it  interesting.  What  he  said  frightened  Harvard  theology  it 
self  back  toward  at  least  Unitarian  orthodoxy.  Here  are  two 
bits  of  his  unfettered  exhortation  :  — 

"  Let  me  admonish  you,  first  of  all,  to  go  alone;  to  refuse  the  good 
models,  even  those  which  are  sacred  in  the  imagination  of  men,  and 
dare  to  love  God  without  mediator  or  veil.  .  .  .  Thank  God  for  these 
good  men,  but  say,  '  I  also  am  a  man.'  Imitation  cannot  go  above  its 
model.  The  imitator  dooms  himself  to  hopeless  mediocrity.  The  in 
ventor  did  it  because  it  was  natural  to  him,  and  so  in  him  it  has  a 
charm.  In  the  imitator  something  else  is  natural,  and  he  bereaves 
himself  of  his  own  beauty,  to  come  short  of  another  man's. 

"  Yourself  a  new-born  bard  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  cast  behind  you  ail 
conformity,  and  acquaint  men  at  first  hand  with  the  Deity. 

"  I  look  for  the  hour  when  that  supreme  Beauty  which  ravished  the 
souls  of  those  eastern  men,  and  chiefly  of  those  Hebrews,  and  through 
their  lips  spoke  oracles  to  all  time,  shall  speak  in  the  West  also. 
The  Hebrew  and  Greek  Scriptures  contain  immortal  sentences,  that 
have  been  bread  of  life  to  millions.  But  they  have  no  epical  in 
tegrity ;  are  fragmentary;  are  not  shown  in  their  order  to  the  intel 
lect.  I  look  for  the  new  Teacher  that  shall  follow  so  far  those  shining 
laws  that  he  shall  see  them  come  full  circle  ;  shall  see  their  rounding 
complete  grace;  shall  see  the  world  to  be  the  mirror  of  the  soul;  shall 
see  the  identity  of  the  law  of  gravitation  with  purity  of  heart;  and 
shall  show  that  the  Ought,  that  Duty,  is  one  thing  with  Science,  with 
Beauty,  and  with  Joy." 

In  such  spirit  as  these  earlier  works  show,  he  went  on  lec 
turing  and  writing  all  his  life,  incidentally,  it  is  said,  displaying 
practical  good  sense.  Although  he  never  made  a  fortune,  he 
managed  to  lay  by  more  money  than  most  of  his  literary 
contemporaries  and  to  provide  for  a  comfortable  old  age.  He 


EMERSON  315 

lived  until  1882.  Plenty  of  Boston  people  not  yet  past  mid 
dle  age  still  remember  his  figure,  which  so  beautifully  em 
bodied  the  gracious  dignity,  the  unpretentious  scope,  and  the 
unassuming  distinction  of  those  who  led  the  New  England 
Renaissance. 

Emerson's  work  is  so  individual  that  you  can  probably  get 
no  true  impression  of  it  without  reading  deeply  for  yourself. 
To  many  this  may  be  irksome.  Like  all  powerful  individ 
ualities,  his  can  hardly  leave  a  reader  indifferent ;  you  will  be 
either  attracted  or  repelled,  and  if  repelled,  the  repulsion  will 
very  likely  make  the  reading  demand  a  strenuous  act  of  will. 
But  any  student  of  American  letters  must  force  himself  to  the 
task;  for  Emerson,  thinking,  talking,  writing,  lecturing  from 
that  Concord  where  he  lived  during  the  greater  part  of  his 
life,  produced,  in  less  than  half  a  century,  work  which  as  time 
goes  on  and  as  the  things  which  other  men  were  making  begin 
to  fade,  seems  more  and  more  sure  of  survival.  America 
produced  him  ;  and  whether  you  like  him  or  not,  he  is  bound 
to  live. 

As  one  grows  familiar  with  his  work,  its  most  characteristic 
trait  begins  to  seem  one  which  in  a  certain  sense  is  not  indi 
vidual  at  all,  but  rather  is  common  to  all  phases  of  lasting 
literature. 

Classical  immortality,  of  course,  is  demonstrable  only  by 
the  lapse  of  cumulating  ages.  One  thing,  however,  seems 
sure  :  in  all  acknowledged  classics,  —  in  the  great  works  of 
antique  literature,  sacred  and  profane  alike,  and,  to  go  no 
further,  in  the  great  poetry  of  Dante  or  of  Shakspere,  —  there 
proves  to  reside  a  vitality  which  as  the  centuries  pass  shows 
itself  less  and  less  conditioned  by  the  human  circumstances 
of  the  writers.  No  literary  expression  was  ever  quite  free 
from  historical  environment.  Homer  —  one  poet  or  many  — 
belongs  to  the  heroic  age  of  Greece ;  Virgil,  or  Horace,  to 
Augustan  Rome;  Dante  to  the  Italy  of  Guelphs  and  Ghi- 
bellines  ;  Shakspere  to  Elizabethan  England.  But  take  at 


316     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

random  any  page  from  any  of  these,  and  you  will  find  some 
thing  so  broadly,  pervasively,  lastingly  human,  that  generation 
after  generation  will  read  it  on  with  no  sense  of  the  chang 
ing  epochs  which  have  passed  since  the  man  who  spoke  this 
word  and  the  men  for  whom  it  was  spoken  have  rested  in 
immortal  slumber.  In  the  work  of  Emerson,  whatever  its 
final  value,  there  is  something  of  this  note.  Every  other 
writer  at  whom  we  have  glanced,  and  almost  every  other 
at  whom  we  shall  glance  hereafter,  demands  for  understand 
ing  that  we  revive  our  sympathy  with  the  fading  or  faded 
conditions  which  surrounded  his  conscious  life.  At  best  these 
other  works,  vitally  contemporaneous  in  their  own  days,  grow 
more  and  more  old-fashioned.  Emerson,  on  the  other  hand, 
from  beginning  to  end,  seems  constantly  modern,  with  a  con 
temporaneousness  almost  as  perennial  as  that  of  Scripture 
itself.  Though  his  work  may  lack  something  of  true  great 
ness,  it  surely  seems  alive  with  such  unconditioned  freedom 
of  temper  as  makes  great  literature  so  inevitably  lasting. 

Take,  for  example,  the  first  page  at  which  a  volume  of  his 
"  Essays  "  chances  to  open,  —  that  where  the  verse  is  printed 
with  which  he  prefaced  his  essay  on  "  Spiritual  Laws  "  :  — 

"  The  living  Heaven  thy  prayers  respect, 
House  at  once  and  architect, 
Quarrying  man's  rejected  hours, 
Builds  there  with  eternal  towers ; 
Sole  and  self-commanded  works, 
Fears  not  undermining  days, 
Grows  by  decays. 
And,  by  famous  might  that  lurks 
In  reaction  and  recoil, 
Makes  flame  to  freeze  and  ice  to  boil ; 
Forging,  through  swart  arms  of  Offence, 
The  silver  seat  of  Innocence." 

What  this  means  we  may  admit  ourselves  unable  to  under 
stand  ;  but  with  all  due  vexation  or  humility,  we  can  hardly 
help  feeling  that  here  is  not  a  word  or  even  a  lurking  mood 


EMERSON 


317 


which  might  not  have  emerged  from  eldest  human  time,  or 
might  not  as  well  emerge  from  the  most  remote  human  future 
our  imagination  can  conceive.  In  essence  throughout,  Emer 
son's  work  bids  fair  to  disregard  the  passing  of  time;  its 
spirit  seems  little  more  conditioned  by  the  circumstances  of 
nineteenth-century  Concord  or  Boston  than  Homer's  was  by 
the  old  ^Egean  breezes. 

In  form,  on  the  other  hand,  Emerson's  work  seems  almost 
as  certainly  local.  Broadly  speaking,  it  falls  into  two  classes, 
—  essays  and  poems.  The  essays  are  generally  composed  of 
materials  which  he  collected  for  purposes  of  lecturing.  His 
astonishing  lack  of  method  is  familiar ;  he  would  con 
stantly  make  note  of  any  idea  which  occurred  to  him  ;  and 
when  he  wished  to  give  a  lecture,  he  would  huddle  together  as 
many  of  these  notes  as  should  fill  the  assigned  time,  trusting 
with  all  the  calm  assurance  of  his  unfaltering  individualism 
that  the  truth  inherent  in  the  separate  memoranda  would  give 
them  all  together  the  unity  implied  in  the  fact  of  their  com 
mon  sincerity.  But  though  this  bewildering  lack  of  system 
for  a  moment  disguise  the  true  character  of  his  essays,  the 
fact  that  these  essays  were  so  often  delivered  as  lectures 
should  remind  us  of  what  they  really  are.  The  Yankee 
lecturers,  of  whom  Emerson  was  the  most  eminent,  were  only 
half-secularised  preachers,  —  men  who  stood  up  and  talked  to 
ancestrally  attentive  audiences.  And  these  eager  hearers  were 
disposed  at  once  to  respect  the  authority  of  their  teachers,  to 
be  on  the  look-out  for  error,  and  to  go  home  with  a  sense  of 
edification.  Emerson's  essays,  in  short,  prove  to  be  an  obvi 
ous  development  from  the  endless  sermons  with  which  for  gen 
erations  his  ancestors  had  regaled  the  New  England  fathers. 
In  much  the  same  way,  Emerson's  poems,  for  all  their  erratic 
oddity  of  form,  prove  on  consideration  to  possess  many  quali 
ties  of  temper  for  which  an  orthodox  mind  would  have  sought 
expression  in  hymns.  They  are  designed  not  so  much  to  set 
forth  human  emotion  or  to  give  aesthetic  delight  as  to  stimulate 


3i8     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

moral  or  spiritual  ardour.     For  all  his  individualism,  Emerson 
could  not  help  being  a  good  old  inbred  Yankee  preacher. 

The  orthodox  clergy  of  New  England,  however,  came,  as 
truly  as  Paul  himself,  to  preach  Christ  crucified.     To  say  that 
preaching  so  various  as  Emerson's  excludes  anything,  would 
be  presumptuous.     But  certainly  the  impression  produced  by 
more  than  one  examination  of  Emerson's  writings  goes  far  to 
warrant  the  assertion  that  the  one  thing  which  he  ignored  was 
the    crucifixion.     Christ    as    a  philosopher  he  respected  and 
reverenced  ;  but  Christ  the  Redeemer,  who  takes  upon   Him 
self  the  sins  of  the  world,  interested  him  no  more  than  the 
Lord's  Supper.     So  far  as  Christ  was  a  prophet,  a  speaker  of 
beautiful  and  noble  truth,  a  living   example   of  stainless   life, 
Emerson    could    reverently   bow    before    him;    but    when    it 
came  to  considering  Christ  as  more  divine  than  other  good 
men,  this  same  Emerson  found  the  act  as  far  from  reasonable 
as  asserting  one  day's  sunshine  superior  to  that  of  another. 
The  Christian  Scriptures  he  thought  on  the  whole  nobler  than 
even  the  Greek,  and  still  more  so  than  those  more  remote  ones 
with  which  he  overloaded  some  later  numbers  of  the  "  Dial." 
All  alike,  however,  great  and  small,  interested  him  merely  as 
guides,  neither    more   nor  less  authoritative  than   such  other 
guides  as  experience  or  the  inner  light.      Each    and    all    he 
valued  only  so  far  as  they  might  help  mankind  toward  percep 
tion  of  the  truth  which  he  felt  it  his  business  to  preach.      His 
business,  he  felt  it,  rather  than  his  duty.     That  fact  of  "in 
terest,"  for  lack  of  which  he  discarded  the  most  sacred  of  all 
Christian  traditions,  really  went  to  the  depths  of  his   nature. 
What  interested  him  he  was  prepared  to  set  forth   so  long  as 
the  interest  lasted  ;  what  did  not  interest  him  he  was  equally 
prepared  serenely  to  neglect,  no  matter  what    anybody   else 
thought  about  it.     He  had,  however,  the  native  grace  never 
to  relax  his  interest  in  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  deepest  of 
all  truths  ;  namely,  that  beyond  human  ken  there  lie  unfathom 
able,  unseen,  inexhaustible  depths  of  reality.     Into  these  depths 


EMERSON  319 

he  was  constantly  seeking  to  pry  as  deeply  as  his  human  lim 
itations  would  allow  ;  and  what  he  saw  there  he  was  constantly 
and  eagerly  interested  to  reveal.  A  Yankee  preacher  of  un 
fettered  idealism,  one  may  call  him  ;  better  still,  its  seer,  its 
prophet. 

Idealism,  of  course,  is  ancestrally  familiar  to  any  race  of 
Puritan  origin.  That  life  is  a  fleeting  manifestation  of  un 
fathomable  realities  which  lie  beyond  it,  that  all  we  see  and 
all  we  do  and  all  we  know  are  merely  symbols  of  things  un 
seen,  unactable,  unknowable,  had  been  preached  to  New 
England  from  the  beginning.  But  Emerson's  idealism  soared 
far  above  that  of  the  Christian  fathers.  Their  effort  was 
constantly  to  reduce  unseen  eternities  to  a  system  as  rigid  as 
that  which  addressed  their  human  senses;  and  this  effort 
has  so  far  succeeded  that  to-day  those  who  call  God  by  His 
name  thereby  almost  clothe  Him  in  flesh  and  blood,  in  Jove- 
like  beard  and  flowing  robes,  turning  Him  once  more,  even 
though  immortally,  into  a  fresh  symbol  of  the  infinite  divine 
self  which  essentially  transcends  all  limitation.  To  Emerson, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  name  of  God,  like  the  life  of  Christ, 
grouped  itself  with  the  little  facts  of  every-day  existence  as 
simply  one  more  phenomenal  symbol  of  unspeakable,  un 
fathomable,  transcendental  truth.  There  is  for  ever  some 
thing  beyond  ;  you  may  call  it  God,  you  may  call  it  Nature, 
you  may  call  it  Over-Soul;  each  name  becomes  a  fresh  limi 
tation,  a  mere  symbolic  bit  of  this  human  language  of  ours. 
The  essential  thing  is  not  what  you  call  the  everlasting  eter 
nities  ;  it  is  that  you  shall  never  cease,  simply  and  reverently, 
with  constantly  living  interest,  to  recognise  and  to  adore 
them. 

Now,  in  contrast  with  this  infinite  eternity  of  divine  truth, 
no  man,  not  even  Christ  himself,  is  free  from  the  almost 
equally  infinite  limitations  of  earthly  life.  The  essence  of 
truth  is  that  it  comprehends  and  comprises  all  things,  phe 
nomena  and  ideals  alike;  and  we  men,  great  or  small,  our- 


320     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

selves  on  any  eternal  scale  little  more  wonderful  than  are  the 
leaves  of  grass  which  spring  and  wither  in  the  field,  can  per 
ceive  at  any  moment  only  one  aspect  of  this  truth.  Look  at 
the  moon  ;  when  it  is  full  you  shall  see  it  as  a  silvery  disk  in 
the  heavens  ;  again  it  is  shrunk  to  a  sickle;  and  yet  again  you 
shall  see  no  moon  at  all.  By  and  by  you  learn  a  little  of  the 
secret  law  which  reveals  the  same  satellite  first  in  one  of  its 
protean  forms  and  then  in  another  throughout  the  changing 
months  of  our  fleeting  human  years.  Gaze  next  into  the 
infinities,  whereof  the  system  is  so  unspeakably  further  from 
simplicity  than  the  motions  of  any  moon  or  planets.  At  one 
moment  you  shall  see  them  in  one  aspect,  at  the  next  in  an 
other,  and  so  on  till  life  and  eternity  shall  merge.  Nay,  you 
shall  have  less  true  knowledge  of  them  than  if  for  a  little 
while  one  should  revisit  the  glimpses  of  the  moon,  and,  seeing 
only  a  curved  line  dimly  gleaming  in  sunset  skies,  should  re 
turn  to  the  shades  with  news  that  there  is  no  moon  left  but  a 
sinking  new  one. 

Would  you  strive  to  reconcile  one  with  another  the  glories 
of  eternity  ?  strive,  with  your  petty  human  powers,  to  prove 
them  consistent  things  ?  — 

"  Why  should  you  keep  your  head  over  your  shoulder  ?  Why  drag 
about  this  corpse  of  your  memory,  lest  you  contradict  somewhat  you 
have  stated  in  this  or  that  public  place?  Suppose  you  should  con 
tradict  yourself :  what  then  ?  .  .  .  A  foolish  consistency  is  the  hob 
goblin  of  little  minds,  adored  by  little  statesmen  and  philosophers  and 
divines.  With  consistency  a  great  soul  has  simply  nothing  to  do. 
He  may  as  well  concern  himself  with  the  shadow  on  the  wall.  Speak 
what  you  think  now  in  hard  words  and  to-morrow  speak  what  to 
morrow  thinks  in  hard  words  again,  though  it  contradict  everything 
you  have  said  to-day.  .  .  .  Pythagoras  was  misunderstood,  and  So 
crates,  and  Jesus,  and  Luther,  and  Copernicus,  and  Galileo,  and 
Newton,  and  every  pure  and  wise  spirit  that  ever  took  flesh.  To  be 
great  is  to  be  misunderstood." 

In  Emerson's  calm  impatience  of  philosophic  system  there 
is  a  fresh  touch  of  that  unhesitating  assurance  with  which  he 
brushed  aside  the  most  sacred  of  Christian  institutions,  when 


EMERSON  321 

for  a  moment  it  threatened  to  limit  him.  u  See,"  he  seems 
to  bid  you,  "and  report  what  you  see  as  truly  as  language  will 
let  you.  Then  concern  yourself  no  more  as  to  what  men 
shall  say  of  your  seeing  or  of  your  saying."  For  even  though 
what  you  perceive  be  a  gleam  of  absolute  truth,  the  moment 
you  strive  to  focus  its  radiance  in  the  little  terms  of  human 
language,  you  must  limit  the  diffusive  energy  which  makes  it 
radiant.  So  even  though  your  gleams  be  in  themselves  con 
sistent  one  with  another,  your  poor  little  vehicle  of  words, 
conventional  and  faint  symbols  with  which  mankind  has 
learned  to  blunder,  must  perforce  dim  each  gleam  by  a  limi 
tation  itself  irreconcilable  with  truth.  Language  at  best  was 
made  to  phrase  what  the  cant  of  our  passingly  fashionable 
philosophy  has  called  the  knowable,  and  what  interested 
Emerson  surged  infinitely  throughout  the  unknowable  realms. 
Take  that  famous  passage  from  his  essay  in  u  Society  and 
Solitude,"  on  u  Civilisation  "  :  — 

"  '  It  was  a  great  instruction,'  said  a  saint  in  Cromwell's  war,  '  that 
the  best  couragss  are  but  beams  of  the  Almighty.'  Hitch  your 
wagon  to  a  star.  Let  us  not  fag  in  paltry  works  which  serve  our  pot 
and  bag  alone.  Let  us  not  lie  and  steal.  No  god  will  help.  We 
shall  find  all  their  teams  going  the  other  way,  —  Charles's  Wain, 
Great  Bear,  Orion,  Leo,  Hercules ;  every  god  will  leave  us.  Work 
rather  for  those  interests  which  the  divinities  honor  and  promote,  — 
justice,  love,  freedom,  knowledge,  utility." 

In  one  sense  this  seems  hodge-podge;  in  another,  for  all 
its  lack  of  lyric  melody,  it  seems  an  almost  lyric  utterance 
of  something  which  all  men  may  know  and  which  no  man 
may  define.  "  Hitch  your  waggon  to  a  star  "  has  flashed  into 
the  idiom  of  our  speech  ;  but  if  you  try  to  translate  it  into 
visual  terms  you  must  find  it  a  mad  metaphor.  The  waggon  is 
no  real  rattling  vehicle  of  the  Yankee  country,  squalid  in  its 
dingy  blue ;  nor  is  the  star  any  such  as  ever  twinkled  through 
the  clear  New  England  nights.  No  chain  ever  forged  could 
reach  far  on  the  way  from  a  Concord  barn  to  Orion.  Yet 

21 


322     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

behind  the  homely,  incomplete  symbol  there  is  a  thought, 
an  emotion,  flashing  swifter  than  ever  ray  of  starry  light,  and 
so  binding  together  the  smallest  things  and  the  greatest  which 
lie  within  our  human  ken  that  for  an  instant  we  may  feel 
them  both  alike  in  magnitude,  each  alike  mere  symbols  of 
illimitable  truth  beyond,  and  both  together  significant  only 
because  for  an  instant  we  have  snatched  them  together,  al 
most  at  random,  from  immeasurable  eternity. 

For  phenomena,  after  all,  are  only  symbols  of  the  eternities, 
and  words  at  their  best  are  trivial,  fleeting,  conventional 
symbols  of  little  nobler  than  these  mere  phenomena  them 
selves  :  — 

"Good  as  is  discourse,  silence  is  better,  and  shames  it.  The 
length  of  the  discourse  indicates  the  distance  of  thought  betwixt  the 
speaker  and  the  hearer.  If  they  were  at  a  perfect  understanding  in 
any  part,  no  words  would  be  necessary  thereon.  If  at  one  in  all  parts, 
no  words  would  be  suffered." 

So  in  a  way  of  his  own  Emerson  disdained  words.  This 
peculiarity  appears  perhaps  most  clearly  when  he  is  avowedly 
dealing  with  matters  of  fact.  In  1856  he  published  a  book 
named  "  English  Traits,"  in  which  he  recorded  the  impres 
sions  made  on  him  by  two  visits  to  England,  some  fifteen 
years  apart.  His  subject  here  is  what  he  had  observed  as  a 
traveller ;  his  treatment  of  it  falls  into  unsystematic  notes, 
each  phrased  in  terms  of  unqualified  assertion.  As  you  read, 
you  find  few  statements  which  do  not  seem  full  of  shrewd, 
suggestive  truth:  — 

"  Man  in  England,"  he  says,  for  example,  "  submits  to  be  a  prod 
uct  of  political  economy.  On  a  bleak  moor  a  mill  is  built,  a  banking 
house  is  opened,  and  men  come  in  as  water  in  a  sluiceway,  and  towns 
and  cities  rise.  Man  is  made  as  a  Birmingham  button.  The  doub 
ling  of  the  population  dates  from  Watt's  steam-engine.  A  landlord 
who  owns  a  province,  says,  'The  tenantry  are  unprofitable;  let  me 
have  sheep.'  He  unroofs  the  houses  and  ships  the  population  to 
America." 


EMERSON  323 

Again,  a   little   later  we  read  :  — 

"  There  is  an  English  hero  superior  to  the  French,  the  German,  the 
Italian,  or  the  Greek.  When  he  is  brought  to  the  strife  with  fate,  he 
sacrifices  a  richer  material  possession  and  on  more  purely  metaphysi 
cal  grounds.  He  is  there  with  his  own  consent,  face  to  face  with 
fortune,  which  he  defies.  On  deliberate  choice  and  from  grounds  of 
character,  he  has  elected  his  part  to  live  and  die  for,  and  dies  with 
grandeur." 

Each  of  these  statements  seems  true,  and  they  are  not  really 
incompatible  ;  but  each  needs  the  other  to  qualify  the  im 
pression  of  universality  which  Emerson  somehow  conveys  with 
every  sentence.  Qualification  he  rarely  stoops  to.  All  he 
says  is  true,  all  incomplete,  all  suggestive,  all  traceable  to  the 
actual  facts  of  that  complex  England  which  gave  rise  to  all. 
And  just  as  Emerson  writes  about  England,  with  its  wealth  and 
its  manufactures,  its  aristocracy  and  its  cockneys,  its  "  Times  " 
and  its  trade  and  its  Stonehenge,  so  he  writes  elsewhere  of 
God,  of  the  eternities,  of  Concord  farmers,  of  the  Over-Soul, 
of  whatever  else  passes  before  his  untiring  earthly  vision. 

A  dangerous  feat,  this.  Any  one  may  attempt  it,  but  most 
of  us  would  surely  fail,  uttering  mere  jargon  wherein  others 
could  discern  little  beyond  our  several  limitations.  As  we  con 
template  Emerson,  then,  our  own  several  infirmities  slowly 
reveal  to  us  more  and  more  clearly  how  true  a  seer  he  was. 
With  more  strenuous  vision  than  is  granted  to  common  men,  he 
really  perceived  in  the  eternities  those  living  facts  and  lasting 
thoughts  which,  with  all  the  careless  serenity  of  his  intellectual 
insolence,  he  rarely  troubled  himself  intelligibly  to  phrase. 

Sometimes  these  perceptions  fairly  fell  within  the  range  of 
language  ;  and  of  language  at  such  moments  Emerson  had  won 
derful  mastery.  Open  his  essays  at  random.  On  one  page 
you  shall  find  phrases  like  this  :  — 

"  By  the  same  fire,  vital,  consecrating,  celestial,  which  burns  until 
it  shall  dissolve  all  things  into  the  waves  and  surges  of  an  ocean  of 
light,  we  see  and  know  each  other." 


324     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

On  another,  which  deals  with  Friendship,  comes  this  frag 
ment  of  an  imaginary  letter :  — 

"  I  am  not  very  wise  ;  my  moods  are  quite  attainable,  and  I  respect 
thy  genius;  it  is  to  me  as  yet  unfathomed ;  yet  dare  I  not  presume  in 
thee  a  perfect  intelligence  of  me,  and  so  thou  art  to  me  a  delicious 
torment." 

And  there  are  hundreds  of  such  felicitous  passages.  Often, 
however,  as  in  that  little  verse  which  preludes  the  essay  on 
u  Spiritual  Laws,"  Emerson  was  face  to  face  with  perceptions 
for  which  language  was  never  framed  ;  and  then  comes  his 
half-inspired  jargon.  Yet,  through  it  all,  you  grow  more 
and  more  to  feel  that  with  true  creative  energy  he  was 
always  striving  to  make  verbal  images  of  what  to  him  were 
true  perceptions ;  and  more  deeply  still  you  grow  aware  that 
in  his  eager  contemplation  of  truth  he  suffered  astonishingly 
little  of  himself  to  intervene  between  perception  and  expres 
sion.  So  long  as  what  he  said  seemed  for  the  moment  true, 
he  cared  for  little  else. 

Again,  one  grows  to  feel  more  and  more  in  Emerson  a  trait 
surprising  in  any  man  so  saturated  with  ideal  philosophy.  As 
the  story  of  Brook  Farm  indicated,  the  Transcendental  move 
ment  generally  expressed  itself  in  ways  which,  whatever  their 
purity,  beauty,  or  sincerity,  had  not  the  grace  of  common 
sense.  In  the  slang  of  our  day,  the  Transcendentalists 
were  cranks.  With  Emerson  the  case  was  different ;  in  the 
daily  conduct  of  his  private  life,  as  well  as  in  the  articulate 
utterances  which  pervade  even  his  most  eccentric  writings, 
you  will  always  find  him,  despite  the  vagaries  of  his  ideal 
philosophy,  a  shrewd,  sensible  Yankee,  full  of  a  quiet,  re 
pressed,  but  ever  present  sense  of  humour  which  prevented  him 
from  overestimating  himself,  and  compelled  him  when  dealing 
with  phenomena  to  recognise  their  relative  practical  value. 
He  was  aware  of  the  Over-Soul,  in  whose  presence  Orion  is  no 
better  than  a  team  which  should  plod  before  a  Concord  hay- 
cart.  He  was  equally  aware  that  a  dollar  is  a  dollar,  and  a  cent 


EMERSON  325 

a  cent,  and  that  dollars  and  cents  are  convenient  things  to 
have  in  pocket.  When  you  think  of  him  as  a  lecturer  or  as 
a  writer  of  books,  then,  you  find  all  the  old  contradiction  in  a 
new  form.  You  go  to  him  as  a  prophet ;  you  find  a  kindly 
gentleman  with  a  good-natured  smile  lurking  in  the  corners  of 
his  lips,  who  seems  to  tell  you  :  "  Dear  me,  I  am  no  more  of 
a  prophet  than  you  are.  We  are  all  prophets.  If  you  like, 
I  will  look  into  the  eternities  with  great  pleasure,  and  tell  you 
what  I  see  there ;  but  at  the  end  of  the  business  I  shall  pre 
sent  you  with  a  little  bill.  If  you  will  pay  it,  I  shall  receipt 
it,  and  dine  a  trifle  better  in  consequence." 

He  was  the  prophet  of  Transcendentalism,  if  you  like;  but, 
after  all,  his  general  manner  and  temper  were  less  prophetic 
than  those  of  conventional  parsons  who  thunder  forth  divine 
authority.  He  was  farther  still  from  the  authoritative  prophets 
of  antiquity.  He  did  not  passionately  seek  God  and  phrase 
his  discoveries  in  the  sacred  mysteries  of  dogma.  He  was 
rather  a  canny,  honest  Yankee  gentleman,  who  mingled  with 
his  countrymen,  and  taught  them  as  well  as  he  could ;  who 
felt  a  kindly  humour  when  other  people  agreed  with  him,  and 
troubled  himself  little  when  they  disagreed ;  who  hitched  his 
waggon  to  star  after  star,  but  never  really  confused  the  stars 
with  the  waggon. 

And  so  descending  to  Concord  earth,  we  find  in  him  a  trait 
very  characteristic  of  the  period  when  he  happened  to  live, 
and  one  at  which  he  himself  would  have  been  the  first  good- 
humouredly  to  smile.  He  was  born  just  when  the  Renais 
sance  of  New  England  was  at  hand,  when  at  last  the  old 
tripod  of  theology,  classics,  and  law  was  seen  not  to  be  the 
only  basis  of  the  human  intellect,  when  all  philosophy  and 
letters  were  finally  opening  to  New  England  knowledge. 
With  all  his  contemporaries  he  revelled  in  this  new  world  of 
human  record  and  expression.  To  the  very  end  he  never 
lost  his  consequent,  exuberantly  boyish  trick  of  dragging  in 
allusions  to  all  sorts  of  personages  and  matters  which  he 


326     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

knew  only  by  name.  Take  that  sentence  at  which  we 
glanced  from  his  essay  on  Self-Reliance  :  u  Pythagoras  was 
misunderstood,  and  Socrates,  and  Jesus,  and  Luther,  and 
Copernicus,  and  Galileo,  and  Newton."  These  great  names 
he  mentions  with  all  the  easy  assurance  of  intimacy;  he 
could  hardly  speak  more  familiarly  of  seven  Concord  far 
mers  idling  in  a  row  on  some  sunny  bench.  Turn  to  him 
anywhere,  and  in  any  dozen  pages  you  will  find  allusions  as 
complacent  as  these,  and  about  as  accidental,  to  the  bewil- 
deringly  various  names  at  which  his  encyclopedia  chanced  to 
open.  He  had,  in  short,  all  the  juvenile  pedantry  of  renas 
cent  New  England  at  a  moment  when  Yankees  had  begun  to 
know  the  whole  range  of  literature  by  name,  and  when  they 
did  not  yet  distinguish  between  such  knowledge  and  the  un 
pretentious  mastery  of  scholarship. 

It  is  now  nearly  twenty  years  since  Emerson's  life  gently 
faded  away,  and  it  is  a  full  sixty  since  his  eager  preaching  or 
prophecy  of  individualistic  idealism  stirred  renascent  New 
England  to  its  depths.  We  have  been  trying  to  guess  what 
Emerson  may  mean  in  permanent  literature.  To  understand 
what  he  means  historically,  we  must  remind  ourselves  again 
of  the  conditions  which  surrounded  his  maturity.  When  he 
came  to  the  pulpit  of  the  Second  Church  of  Boston,  the  tyranny 
of  custom,  at  least  in  theoretical  matters,  was  little  crushed. 
Heretical  though  Unitarianism  was,  it  remained  in  outward 
form  a  dominant  religion.  Statesmanship  and  scholarship, 
too,  were  equally  fixed  and  rigid  ;  and  so,  to  a  degree  hardly 
conceivable  to-day,  was  the  structure  of  society.  Even  to 
day  untrammelled  freedom  of  thought,  unrestrained  assertion 
of  individual  belief,  sometimes  demands  grave  self-sacrifice. 
In  Emerson's  day  it  demanded  heroic  spirit. 

To  say  that  Emerson's  lifelong  heroism  won  us  what  moral 
and  intellectual  freedom  we  now  possess  would  be  to  confuse 
the  man  with  the  movement  of  which  he  is  the  great  exemplar. 
As  the  years  pass,  however,  we  begin  to  understand  that  no 


EMERSON  327 

other  American  writings  record  that  movement  half  so  vitally 
as  his.  As  our  individual  freedom  becomes  more  and  more 
surely  established,  we  may  delight  in  Emerson  more  or  less. 
According  as  our  individuality  responds  or  not  to  the  ideal 
ism  which  touched  him,  we  may  find  him  repellent  or 
sympathetic ;  and  although  it  may  hardly  be  asserted,  it  may 
fairly  be  surmised,  that  even  in  Emerson's  most  memorable 
utterances  the  future  may  find  no  conside^^Btruth  not  better 
phrased  by  others.  For  in  his  effori^^H^ress  truth,  just  as 
in  his  whole  knowledge  of  life,  he  wlKimited  by  the  national 
inexperience  which  throughout  his  time  still  protected  New 
England.  Yet  whether  or  no,  in  generations  to  come,  Emer 
son  shall  prove  to  have  made  lasting  contributions  to  human 
wisdom,  one  thing  which  will  remain  true  of  him  should  com 
mend  him  to  the  regard  of  all  his  countrymen  who  love 
spiritual  freedom.  We  may  not  care  for  the  things  he  said, 
we  may  not  find  sympathetic  the  temper  in  which  he  uttered 
them,  but  we  cannot  deny  that  when,  for  two  hundred  years, 
intellectual  tyranny  had  kept  the  native  American  mind  cramped 
within  the  limits  of  tradition,  Emerson  fearlessly  stood  forth 
as  the  chief  representative  of  that  movement  which  asserted 
the  right  of  every  individual  to  think,  to  feel,  to  speak,  to  act 
for  himself,  confident  that  so  far  as  each  acts  in  sincerity 
good  shall  ensue. 

Whoever  believes  in  individualism,  then,  must  always  re 
spect  in  Emerson  a  living  prophet ;  and,  just  as  surely,  those 
who  find  prospect  of  salvation  only  in  obedience  to  authority 
must  lament  the  defection  from  their  ranks  of  a  spirit  which, 
whatever  its  errors,  even  they  must  admit  to  have  been  brave, 
honest,  serene,  and  essentially  pure  with  all  that  purity  which  is 
the  deepest  grace  of  ancestral  New  England. 


VII 

THE    LESSER    MEN    OF    CONCORD 

CONCORD,  MasS^^setts,  until  Emerson's  time  celebrated  as 
the  place  where  tffl^MJ^ttled  farmers  made  their  stand  against 
the  British  regulars  in^P75,  is  now  even  better  known  as  the 
Yankee  village  where  for  half  a  century  Emerson  lived,  and 
gathered  about  him  a  little  group  of  the  intellectually  and 
spiritually  enlightened.  Until  very  lately,  indeed,  something 
of  this  atmosphere  lingered  in  Concord  air.  Among  the 
humours  of  New  England  for  some  fifteen  years  has  been  a 
Concord  School  of  Philosophy,  where  of  a  summer  fantastic 
people  have  collected  to  hear  and  to  give  lectures.  And 
everybody  has  been  happy,  and  no  human  being  is  known  to 
have  been  harmed.  When  the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy 
began  its  blameless  existence,  however,  what  makes  Concord 
memorable  was  no  longer  there :  Emerson  had  passed  away. 
Whatever  Concord  retained,  it  had  lost  that  saving  grace  of 
sound  good  sense  which  is  among  Emerson's  most  certain 
claims  to  distinction. 

This  trait  of  his  appears  most  clearly  when  we  compare 
him  with  one  or  two  of  his  fellow-townsmen.  Of  the  men 
who  flourished  in  Emerson's  Concord,  to  be  sure,  the  most 
eminent  was  Hawthorne,  whose  work  belongs  not  to  philoso 
phy,  but  to  pure  letters,  and  whom  we  shall  consider  later. 
He  would  hardly  have  expected  a  place  among  the  prophets  of 
the  eternities.  At  least  two  other  men  would  have  been  dis 
posed  to  call  themselves  philosophers,  and,  with  artless  lack  of 
humour,  to  expect  immortality  in  company  with  Emerson  and 
Plato,  and  the  rest.  These  were  Amos  Bronson  Alcott  and 
Henry  David  Thoreau. 


ALCOTT  329 

Alcott  was  the  elder,  and  older  even  than  Emerson.  Born 
in  1799,  the  son  of  an  every-day  Connecticut  farmer,  he  began 
life  as  a  peddler,  in  which  character  he  sometimes  strayed  a 
good  way  southward.  A  thoroughly  honest  man  of  unusually 
active  mind,  his  chief  emotional  trait  appears  to  have  been  a 
self-esteem  which  he  never  found  reason  to  abate.  In  the 
midst  of  peddling,  then,  he  felt  himself  divinely  commissioned 
to  reform  mankind.  He  soon  decided  that  his  reform  ought 
to  begin  with  education.  As  early  as  1823,  having  succeeded 
in  educating  himself  in  a  manner  which  he  found  satisfactory, 
he  opened  a  school  at  his  native  town,  Wolcott,  Connecticut. 
Five  years  later  he  removed  to  Boston,  where  he  announced 
that  if  people  would  send  him  their  children,  he  would  educate 
them  as  children  had  never  been  educated  before. 

At  that  time,  in  1828,  the  spirit  of  reform  was  so  fresh  in 
the  air  of  New  England  as  to  affect  many  heads  which  ought 
to  have  been  too  strong  for  just  that  intoxication.  Among 
Mr.  Alcott's  pupils  at  different  times  were  children  and  grand 
children  of  eminently  conservative  Bostonians.  Dissatisfied 
with  the  mechanical  lifelessness  of  the  regular  schools,  they 
eagerly  accepted  Mr.  Alcott's  novel  theories.  His  method  of 
teaching,  as  reported  by  himself  in  a  volume  or  two  of  conver 
sations  with  his  pupils,  appears  to  have  been  Socratic.  In  the 
midst  of  his  disciples,  Mr.  Alcott  posed  as  a  purified  and 
beautified  Greek  philosopher,  whose  interlocutors  were  Boston 
children,  ranging  between  the  ages  of  three  and  ten.  He 
would  ask  them  questions  about  the  soul  and  the  eternities, 
and  occasionally  about  matters  of  scientific  and  other  fact. 
He  would  try  to  set  their  infant  minds  constructively  work 
ing;  and  incidentally  he  would  always  be  on  the  watch  for  any 
accents  of  perfected  praise  which  might  by  chance  issue  from 
the  mouths  of  these  Yankee  babes  and  sucklings.  Apart  from 
abstract  wisdom,  indeed,  and  its  incidental  humour,  the  most 
obvious  trait  which  distinguishes  Mr.  Alcott  from  Plato's 
Socrates  was  his  honest  disposition  to  learn,  if  so  might  be, 


330     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

from  the  lips  which  he  was  persuading  to  babble.  Very  non 
sensical,  no  doubt,  this  must  seem  nowadays ;  but  there  is  an 
aspect  in  which  it  is  touchingly  characteristic  of  our  renascent 
New  England,  which  hoped  that  freedom  from  shackling  tra 
dition  might  open  an  illimitably  excellent  future. 

Mr.  Alcott's  pristine  innocence  of  good  sense  appeared  most 
pleasantly  in  his  notions  of  discipline.  He  had  remarked  that 
when  people  misbehave,  the  suffering  which  ensues  is  apt  to 
fall  on  others  than  the  sinners.  If  I  hit  you,  for  example,  it  is 
you  who  get  a  black  eye.  Now,  if  human  nature  is  naturally 
good,  men  must  instinctively  shrink  from  consciously  injuring 
others ;  the  strongest  deterrent  force  from  misconduct,  it  fol 
lows,  must  arise  from  the  normal  philanthropy  of  human  beings. 
In  order  to  impress  this  wisdom  on  children  four  or  five  years 
old,  Mr.  Alcott  hit  on  an  ingenious  device.  Some  children,  he 
noticed,  were  disposed  to  be  worse  than  others.  When  these 
bad  ones  were  naughty,  he  reasoned,  they  should  be  made  to 
feel  that  others  suffered,  and  that  the  better  the  others  were, 
the  greater  were  their  sufferings.  Accordingly,  when  a  bad 
child  made  a  noise,  he  would  regularly  shake  a  good  one  in 
the  offender's  presence.  It  is  said,  furthermore,  that  he  did 
not  shrink  from  extreme  conclusions.  Discerning  in  his  rela 
tion  to  his  pupils  an  analogy  to  that  which  exists  between  a 
benevolent  Creator  and  mankind,  and  holding  that  when  man 
misbehaves,  God  is  troubled,  he  is  believed  on  occasions  of 
unusual  gravity  unflinchingly  to  have  inflicted  corporal  pun 
ishment  on  himself,  in  the  presence  of  his  assembled  pupils. 

Extreme  as  this  example  of  Transcendental  doctrine  applied 
to  life  may  seem,  it  is  very  characteristic  of  Bronson  Alcott,  who 
all  his  life  maintained  the  gospel  of  Transcendental  individual 
ism.  Before  many  years  his  school  came  to  an  end.  Mr. 
Alcott  developed  into  a  professional  philosopher,  lecturing, 
writing,  and  failing  to  support  his  family  in  decent  comfort. 
When  the  "  Dial "  was  started,  he  contributed  to  it  his  "  Or 
phic  Sayings."  The  fountain  of  these  was  inexhaustible  ;  and 


ALCOTT  331 

even  Margaret  Fuller  had  practical  sense  enough  to  inform 
him  with  regret  that  she  could  not  afford  to  fill  the  "  Dial "  with 
matter,  however  valuable,  from  a  single  contributor.  His 
reply  was  characteristic ;  he  loftily  regretted  that  the  u  Dial " 
was  no  longer  an  organ  of  free  speech.  In  1842  he  visited 
England,  where  certain  people  of  a  radical  turn  received  him 
with  a  seriousness  which  he  found  gratifying.  Returning  to 
America,  he  endeavoured  to  establish  at  Harvard,  Massachu 
setts,  a  community  called  Fruitlands,  something  like  the  con 
temporary  Brook  Farm,  but  free  from  the  errors  which  he 
detected  in  the  more  famous  community,  founded  under  other 
auspices  than  his  own.  Before  long  Fruitlands  naturally  col 
lapsed.  For  most  of  his  ensuing  life,  which  lasted  until  1888, 
he  lived  in  Concord,  supporting  himself,  so  far  as  he  at  all 
contributed  to  his  support,  by  writing  and  lecturing  in  a  man 
ner  which  satisfied  his  self-esteem  and  very  slightly  appealed  to 
the  public.  Toward  the  end  of  his  life  he  was  the  chief 
founder  of  the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy,  and  he  had  a 
senile  relapse  into  something  like  orthodox  Christianity. 

There  is  an  aspect,  no  doubt,  in  which  such  a  life  seems 
the  acme  of  perverse  selfishness;  but  this  is  far  from  the 
whole  story.  The  man's  weakness,  as  well  as  his  strength, 
lay  in  a  self-esteem  so  inordinate  that  it  crowded  out  of  his 
possibilities  any  approach  either  to  good  sense  or  to  the  saving 
grace  of  humour.  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  honest,  he  was 
sincere,  he  was  devoted  to  idealism,  and  he  attached  to  his 
perceptions,  opinions,  and  utterances  an  importance  which  those 
who  found  him  sympathetic  were  occasionally  inclined  to  share. 
When  his  religious  views  were  affected  by  that  touch  of  senile 
orthodoxy,  sundry  good  people  seemed  disposed  to  think  that 
there  might  be  unusual  rejoicing  in  Heaven.  Most  likely  he 
thought  so  himself.  His  diary,  which  consisted  largely  of  phi 
losophical  speculations,  he  labelled  "  Scriptures  "  for  each  year. 
He  seems  to  have  held  these  utterances  in  as  high  respect  as  ever 
churchman  felt  for  Scripture  of  old.  He  saw  no  reason  why 


332     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

his  inspiration  should  not  be  as  sacred  as  Isaiah's  or  Jeremiah's 
or  Paul's.  Of  his  published  writings  none  was  remembered, 
unless  by  his  immediate  friends,  a  year  after  he  died.  In  life 
the  man  was  a  friend  of  Emerson's,  holding  in  the  town  of 
Concord  a  position  which  he  probably  believed  as  eminent  as 
Emerson's  own.  In  death  he  is  the  extreme  type  of  what 
Yankee  idealism  could  come  to  when  unhampered  by  humour 
or  common-sense. 

If  Alcott  is  rapidly  being  forgotten,  the  case  is  different  with 
Thoreau.  For  whatever  the  quality  of  Thoreau's  philosophy, 
the  man  was  in  his  own  way  a  literary  artist  of  unusual  merit. 
He  was  born  in  1817,  of  a  Connecticut  family,  not  long 
emigrated  from  France.  On  his  mother's  side  he  had  Yankee 
blood,  but  not  of  the  socially  distinguished  kind.  What  little 
record  remains  of  his  kin  would  seem  to  show  that,  like 
many  New  England  folks  of  the  farming  class,  they  had  a 
kind  of  doggedly  self-assertive  temper  which  inclined  them 
to  habits  of  personal  isolation.  Thoreau  graduated  at  Har 
vard  College  in  1837.  While  a  student  he  gained  some  little 
distinction  as  a  writer  of  English ;  his  themes,  as  undergrad 
uate  compositions  are  still  called  at  Harvard,  though  common 
place  in  substance,  are  sensitively  good  in  technical  form.  After 
graduation,  he  lived  mostly  at  Concord.  Though  not  of  pure 
Yankee  descent,  he  had  true  Yankee  versatility;  he  was  a 
tolerable  farmer,  a  good  surveyor,  and  a  skilful  maker  of 
lead-pencils.  In  one  way  or  another,  then,  he  was  able  by 
the  work  of  comparatively  few  weeks  in  the  year  to  provide 
the  simple  necessities  of  his  vegetarian  life.  So  he  early 
determined  to  work  no  more  than  was  needful  for  self-support, 
and  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  time  in  high  thinking. 

In  the  general  course  which  his  thinking  and  conduct  took, 
one  feels  a  trace  of  his  French  origin.  Human  beings,  the 
French  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  strenuously 
held,  are  born  good ;  evil,  then,  must  obviously  spring  from  the 
distorting  influences  of  society.  Accepted  by  the  earlier  Trans- 


THOREAU  333 

cendentalists,  this  line  of  thought  had  led  to  such  experimental 
communities  as  Brook  Farm  and  the  still  more  fleeting  Fruit- 
lands.  Thoreau  was  Frenchman  enough  to  reason  out  indi 
vidualism  to  its  logical  extreme.  The  reform  of  society 
must  be  accomplished,  if  at  all,  by  the  reform  of  the  individ 
uals  who  compose  it.  Communities,  after  all,  are  only  micro- 
cosmic  societies,  wherein  must  lurk  all  the  germs  of  social 
evil.  Let  individuals  look  to  themselves,  then ;  under  no 
other  circumstances  can  human  nature  unobstructedly  develop 
its  inherent  excellence.  So  for  twenty-five  years  Thoreau,  liv 
ing  at  Concord,  steadily  tried  to  keep  himself  free  from  com 
plications  with  other  people.  Incidentally  he  had  the  good  I 
sense  not  to  marry ;  and  as  nobody  was  dependent  on  him 
for  support,  his  method  of  life  could  do  no  harm. 

His  Best-known  experiment  was  his  residence  for  about 
two  years  in  the  woods  near  Concord,  where  he  built  himself 
a  little  cabin,  supported  himself  by  cultivating  land  enough  to 
provide  for  his  immediate  wants,  and  devoted  his  considerable 
leisure  to  philosophic  thought.  The  fruit  of  this  experiment 
was  his  well-known  book,  "Walden;"  published  in  1854,  it 
remains  a  vital  bit  of  literature  for  any  one  who  loves  to  read 
about  Nature. 

Of  course  Thoreau  was  eccentric,  but  his  eccentricity  was 
not  misanthropic.  Inclined  by  temperament  and  philosophy 
alike  to  this  life  of  protestant  solitude,  he  seems  to  have  re 
garded  his  course  as  an  experimental  example.  He  was  not 
disposed  to  quarrel  with  people  who  disagreed  with  him.  All 
he  asked  was  to  be  let  alone.  If  his  life  turned  out  well, 
others  would  ultimately  imitate  him ;  if  it  turned  out  ill,  no 
body  else  would  be  the  worse.  Though  his  philosophising 
often  seems  unpractically  individual,  then,  it  never  exhales 
such  unwholesomeness  as  underlay  Alcott's  self-esteem.  What 
is  more,  there  can  be  no  question  that  his  speculations  have 
appealed  to  some  very  sensible  minds.  All  the  same,  if  he 
had  confined  himself  to  ruminating  on  the  eternities  and 


334     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

human  nature,  with  which  his  sympathy  was  at  best  limited, 
his  position  in  literary  history  would  hardly  be  important. 
What  gave  him  lasting  power  was  his  unusually  sympathetic 
observation  of  Nature.  A  natural  vein  of  indolence,  to  be 
sure,  prevented  him  from  observing  either  precociously  or 
systematically;  but  when,  as  was  more  and  more  the  case, 
he  found  himself  alone  with  woods  and  fields  and  waters,  he 
had  true  delight  in  the  little  sights  which  met  his  eyes,  in  the 
little  sounds  which  came  to  his  ears,  in  all  the  constant,  in 
conspicuous  beauties  which  the  prosaic  toilsomeness  of  Yankee 
life  had  hitherto  failed  to  perceive. 

Nature,  as  every  one  knows,  had  been  a  favourite  theme  of 
that  romantic  revival  in  England  whose  leader  was  Words 
worth.  In  one  aspect,  then,  Thoreau's  writing  often  seems 
little  more  than  an  American  evidence  of  a  temper  which  had 
declared  itself  in  the  old  world  a  generation  before.  Noth 
ing,  however,  can  alter  the  fact  that  the  Nature  he  delighted 
in  was  characteristically  American.  First  of  all  men,  Thoreau 
brought  that  revolutionary  temper  which  recoils  from  the  arti 
ficialities  of  civilisation  face  to  face  with  the  rugged  fields, 
the  pine  woods  and  the  apple  orchards,  the  lonely  ponds  and 
the  crystalline  skies  of  eastern  New  England.  His  travels  oc 
casionally  ranged  so  far  as  the  Merrimac  River,  Cape  Cod,  or 
even  beyond  Maine  into  Canada  ;  but  pleasant  as  the  books  are 
in  which  he  recorded  these  wanderings,  as  exceptional  as  were 
Cotton  Mather's  infrequent  excursions  through  the  bear- 
haunted  wilds  to  Andover,  we  could  spare  them  far  better 
than  "  Walden,"  or  than  the  journals  in  which  for  years  he 
set  down  his  daily  observations  in  the  single  town  of  Concord. 
Thoreau's  individuality  is  often  so  assertive  as  to  repel  a 
sympathy  which  it  happens  not  instantly  to  attract;  but  that 
sympathy  must  be  unwholesomely  sluggish  which  would 
willingly  resist  the  appeal  of  his  communion  with  Nature. 
If  your  lot  be  ever  cast  in  some  remote  region  of  our  simple 
country,  he  can  do  you,  when  you  will,  a  rare  service,  stimu- 


\ 


THOREAU  335 

lating  your  eye  to  see,  and  your  ear  to  hear,  in  all  the  little 
commonplaces  about  you,  those  endlessly  changing  details 
which  make  life  everywhere  so  unfathomably,  immeasurably 
wondrous.  For  Nature  is  truly  a  miracle ;  and  he  who  will 
regard  her  lovingly  shall  never  lack  that  inspiration  which 
miracles  breathe  into  the  spirit  of  mankind. 

Nor  is  Thoreau's  vitality  in  literature  a  matter  only  of  his 
observation.  Open  his  works  almost  anywhere,  —  there  are 
ten  volumes  of  them  now,  —  and  even  in  the  philosophic  pas 
sages  you  will  find  loving  precision  of  touch.  He  was  no  / 
immortal  maker  of  phrases.  Amid  bewildering  obscurities, 
Emerson  now  and  again  flashed  out  utterances  which  may  last 
as  long  as  our  language.  Thoreau  had  no  such  power;  but  • 
he  did  possess  in  higher  degree  than  Emerson  himself  the 
power  of  making  sentences  and  paragraphs  artistically  beauti 
ful.  Read  him  aloud,  and  you  will  find  in  his  work  a  trait 
like  that  which  we  remarked  in  the  cadences  of  Brockden 
Brown  and  of  Poe ;  the  emphasis  of  your  voice  is  bound  to 
fall  where  meaning  demands.  An  effect  like  this  is  attainable 
only  through  delicate  sensitiveness  to  rhythm.  So  when  you 
come  to  Thoreau's  pictures  of  Nature  you  have  an  almost 
inexhaustible  series  of  verbal  sketches  in  which  every  touch 
has  the  grace  of  precision.  On  a  large  scale,  to  be  sure,  his 
composition  falls  to  pieces ;  he  never  troubled  himself  about  a 
systematically  made  book,  or  even  a  systematic  chapter.  In 
mere  choice  of  words,  too,  he  is  generally  so  simple  as  to 
seem  almost  commonplace.  But  his  sentences  and  paragraphs 
are  often  models  of  art  so  fine  as  to  seem  artless.  Take, 
for  example,  this  well-known  passage  from  "  Walden  "  :  — 

"  Early  in  May,  the  oaks,  hickories,  maples,  and  other  trees,  just 
putting  out  amidst  the  pine  woods  around  the  pond,  imparted  a  bright 
ness  like  sunshine  to  the  landscape,  especially  in  cloudy  days,  as  if 
the  sun  were  breaking  through  mists  and  shining  faintly  on  the  hill 
sides  here  and  there.  On  the  third  or  fourth  of  May  I  saw  a  loon  in 
the  pond,  and  during  the  first  week  of  the  month  I  heard  the  whip- 
poorwill,  the  brown  thrasher,  the  veery,  the  wood-pewee,  the  chewink, 


336     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

and  other  birds.  I  had  heard  the  wood-thrush  long  before.  The 
phebe  had  already  come  once  more  and  looked  in  at  my  door  and 
window,  to  see  if  my  house  were  cavern-like  enough  for  her,  sustain 
ing  herself  on  humming  wings  with  clinched  talons,  as  if  she  held  by 
the  air,  while  she  surveyed  the  premises.  The  sulphur-like  pollen  of 
the  pitch-pine  soon  covered  the  pond  and  the  stones  and  the  rotten 
wood  along  the  shore,  so  that  you  could  have  collected  a  barrelful. 
This  is  the  'sulphur  showers'  we  hear  of.  Even  in  Calidas'  drama 
of  Sacontala,  we  read  of  '  rills  dyed  yellow  with  the  golden  dust  of  the 
lotus.'  And  so  the  seasons  went  rolling  on  into  summer,  as  one 
rambles  into  higher^and  higher  grass." 

The  more  you  read  work  like  that,  the  more  admirable  you 
will  find  its  artistic  form. 

With  Thoreau's  philosophising  the  case  is  different. 
Among  Emerson's  chief  traits  was  the  fact  that  when  he 
scrutinised  the  eternities  in  search  of  ideal  truth,  his  whole 
energy  was  devoted  to  the  act  of  scrutiny.  Vague,  then, 
and  bewildering  as  his  phrases  may  often  seem,  we  are  sen 
sible  of  a  feeling  that  this  Emerson  is  actually  contemplating 
the  immensities ;  and  these  are  so  unspeakably  vaster  than 
all  mankind  —  not  to  speak  of  the  single  human  being  who 
for  the  moment  is  striving  to  point  our  eyes  toward  them  — • 
that  our  thoughts  again  and  again  concern  themselves  rather 
with  the  truths  thus  dimly  seen  than  with  anything  concern 
ing  the  seer.  The  glass  through  which  Emerson  con 
templated  the  mysteries  is  achromatic.  Now,  Thoreau's 
philosophic  speculations  so  surely  appeal  to  powerful  minds 
who  find  them  sympathetic  that  we  may  well  admit  them  to 
involve  more  than  they  instantly  reveal  to  minds  not  disposed 
to  sympathise.  Even  their  admirers,  however,  must  admit 
them  to  be  coloured  throughout  by  the  unflagging  self-con 
sciousness  involved  in  Thoreau's  eccentric,  harmless  life. 
Perhaps,  like  Emerson,  Thoreau  had  the  true  gift  of  vision  ; 
but  surely  he  could  never  report  his  visions  in  terms  which 
may  suffer  us  to  forget  himself.  The  glass  which  he  offers  to 
our  eyes  is  always  tinctured  with  his  own  disturbing  individu 
ality.  In  spite,  then,  of  the  fact  that  Thoreau  was  a  more 


THOREAU  337 

conscientious  artist  than  Emerson,  this  constant  obtrusion  of 
his  personality  ranges  him  in  a  lower  rank,  just  as  surely  as 
his  loving  sense  of  nature  ranges  him  far  above  the  half-foolish 
egotism  of  Bronson  Alcott.  More  and  more  the  emergence 
of  Emerson  from  his  surroundings  grows  distinct.  Like  truly 
great  men,  whether  he  was  truly  great  or  not,  he  possessed 
the  gift  of  such  common-sense  as  saves  men  from  the  per 
versities  of  eccentricity. 

We  come  now  to  a  fact  on  which  we  must  lightly  touch. 
When  we  glanced  at  the  first  number  of  the  u  Dial "  we  re 
marked  that  the  only  advertisement  on  its  cover  was  that  of 
Mr.  Jacob  Abbott's  "  Rollo  Books,"  which  remain,  with 
their  unconscious  humour  and  art,  such  admirable  pictures 
of  Yankee  life  about  1840.  Twenty -eight  years  later,  Louisa 
Alcott,  the  admirably  devoted  daughter  of  that  minor  prophet 
of  Transcendentalism,  published  a  book  for  girls,  called 
"  Little  Women,"  which  gives  almost  as  artless  a  picture  of 
Yankee  life  in  the  generation  which  followed  Rollo's.  A  com 
parison  between  these  two  works  is  interesting.  Comically 
limited  and  consciously  self-content  as  the  world  of  Rollo  is, 
it  has  a  refinement  which  amounts  almost  to  distinction. 
Whatever  you  think  of  the  Holiday  family  and  their  friends, 
who  may  be  taken  as  types  of  the  Yankee  middle  class  just 
after  Gilbert  Stuart  painted  the  prosperous  gentlemen  of 
Boston,  they  are  not  vulgar.  The  world  of  u  Little  Women  " 
is  a  far  more  sophisticated  world  than  that  of  Rollo,  a  bigger 
one,  a  rather  braver  one,  and^just  as  sweet  and  clean.  But 
instead  of  unquestioning  self-respect,  its  personages  display 
that  rude  self-assertion  which  has  generally  tainted  the  lower 
middle  class  of  English-speaking  countries. 

This    contrast    suggests   a   contrast    between   the    personal 
careers   of  Alcott   and    of  Thoreau   and   those   of  the  New^ 
England   men  of  letters  whom  we  have  hitherto  mentioned. 
Whatever  their  superficial  manners,  Alcott  and  Thoreau  alike 
remained   in   temper  what  they  were  born,  —  farmers'  sons, 

I 


338     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

men  of  the  people.  Emerson  and  Channing,  on  the  other 
hand,  and  the  historians  and  the  scholars  and  the  public  men 
of  New  England,  belonged  either  by  birth  or  by  early  acquired 
habit  to  the  traditional  aristocracy  of  their  native  region.  A 
similar  contrast  we  remarked  in  New  York,  where  Irving 
and  Cooper  and  Bryant  were  succeeded  by  Poe  and  the 
Knickerbocker  School.  As  the  nineteenth  century  proceeded, 
literature  in  America  tended  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  people 
not  less  worthy,  but  perceptibly  less  distinguished  than  those 
who  had  first  illustrated  it. 

We  have  now  followed  the  Renaissance  of  New  England 
from  its  beginning  in  the  fresh  vitality  of  public  utterances 
and  scholarship,  through  the  awakening  optimism  of  the  Uni 
tarians,  to  the  disintegrant  vagaries  of  the  Transcendentalists. 
We  have  seen  how,  as  this  impulse  proceeded  to  affect  the 
less  distinguished  social  classes,  it  tended  to  assume  forms 
which  might  reasonably  alarm  people  of  sagely  conservative 
habit.  Reform  in  some  respects  is  essentially  destructive ; 
and  the  enthusiasm  of  Yankee  reformers  early  showed  symp 
toms  of  concentration  in  a  shape  which  ultimately  became 
very  destructive  indeed.  This,  to  which  we  must  now  turn, 
and  which  enlisted  at  least  the  sympathies  of  almost  every 
Transcendentalist,  —  which  was  warmly  advocated  by  Chan 
ning  himself,  which  stirred  Emerson  to  fervid  utterances  con 
cerning  actual  facts,  and  which  inspired  some  of  the  latest 
and  most  ardent  writings  of  Thoreau,  —  was  the  philanthropic 
movement  for  the  abolition  of  negro  slavery,  an  institution 
which  still  persisted  throughout  our  Southern  States. 


VIII 

THE    ANTISLAVERY    MOVEMENT 

ENTHUSIASM  for  reform  was  obviously  involved  in  the  concep 
tion  of  human  nature  which  underlay  the  world-wide  revolu 
tionary  movement  whose  New  England  manifestation  took 
the  forms  of  Unitarianism  and  Transcendentalism.  If  human  - 
nature  is  essentially  good,  if  evil  is  merely  the  consequence  of 
what  modern  evolutionists  might  call  artificial  environment,  it 
follows  that  relaxation  of  environment,  releasing  men  from 
temporary  bondage,  must  change  things  for  the  better.  The 
heyday  of  Transcendentalism,  then,  had  a  humourous  super 
ficial  aspect,  which  was  admirably  described  in  the  opening 
passage  of  Lowell's  essay  on  Thoreau,  published  in  1865  :  — 

"  What  contemporary,  if  he  was  in  the  fighting  period  of  his  life, 
(since  Nature  sets  limits  about  her  conscription  for  spiritual  fields,  as 
the  State  does  in  physical  warfare,)  will  ever  forget  what  was  some 
what  vaguely  called  the  '  Transcendental  Movement '  of  thirty  years 
ago?  Apparently  set  astir  by  Carlyle's  essays  on  the  'Signs  of  the 
Times,'  and  on  *  History,'  the  final  and  more  immediate  impulse  seemed 
to  be  given  by  'Sartor  Resartus.'  At  least  a  republication  in  Boston 
of  that  wonderful  Abraham  a  Sancta  Clara  sermon  on  Falstaff's  text 
of  the  miserable  forked  radish  gave  the  signal  for  a  sudden  msntal  and 
moral  mutiny.  Ecce  mine  tempus  acceptabile  f  was  shouted  on  all  hands 
with  every  variety  of  emphasis,  and  by  voices  of  every  conceivable 
pitch,  representing  the  three  sexes  of  men,  women  and  Lady  Mary 
Wortley  Montagues.  The  nameless  eagle  of  the  tree  Ygdrasil  was 
about  to  sit  at  last,  and  wild-eyed  enthusiasts  rushed  from  all  sides, 
each  eager  to  thrust  under  the  mystic  bird  that  chalk  egg  from  which  _ 
the  new  and  fairer  Creation  was  to  be  hatched  in  due  time.  Redeiint 
Saturnia  regna,  —  so  much  was  certain,  though  in  what  shape,  or 
by  what  methods,  was  still  a  matter  of  debate.  Every  possible  form 
of  intellectual  and  physical  dyspepsia  brought  forth  its  gospel.  Bran 
had  its  prophets,  and  the  presartorial  simplicity  of  Adam  its  martyrs, 


340     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

tailored  impromptu  from  the  tar-pot  by  incensed  neighbours,  and  sent 
forth  to  illustrate  the  'feathered  Mercury,'  as  denned  by  Webster 
and  Worcester.  Plainness  of  speech  was  carried  to  a  pitch  that  would 
have  taken  away  the  breath  of  George  Fox ;  and  even  swearing  had  its 
evangelists,  who  answered  a  simple  inquiry  after  their  health  with  an 
elaborate  ingenuity  of  imprecation  that  might  have  been  honourably 
mentioned  by  Marlborough  in  general  orders.  Everybody  had  a 
mission  (with  a  capital  M)  to  attend  to  everybody  else's  business.  No 
brain  but  had  its  private  maggot,  which  must  have  found  pitiably  short 
commons  sometimes.  Not  a  few  impecunious  zealots  abjured  the  use 
of  money  (unless  earned  by  other  people),  professing  to  live  on  the 
internal  revenues  of  the  spirit.  Some  had  an  assurance  of  instant  mil 
lennium  so  soon  as  hooks  and  eyes  should  be  substituted  for  buttons. 
Communities  were  established  where  everything  was  to  be  common 
but  common  sense.  Men  renounced  their  old  Gods,  and  hesitated  only 
whether  to  bestow  their  furloughed  allegiance  on  Thor  or  Budh.  Con 
ventions  were  held  for  every  hitherto  inconceivable  purpose.  The 
belated  gift  of  tongues,  as  among  the  Fifth  Monarchy  men,  spread  like 
a  contagion,  rendering  its  victims  incomprehensible  to  all  Christian 
men  ;  whether  equally  so  to  the  most  distant  possible  heathen  or  not  was 
Unexperimented,  though  many  would  have  subscribed  liberally  that  a 
fair  trial  might  be  made.  It  was  the  pentecost  of  Shinar.  The  day  of 
utterances  reproduced  the  day  of  rebuses  and  anagrams,  and  there  was 
nothing  so  simple  that  uncial  letters  and  the  style  of  Diphilus  the 
Labyrinth  could  not  turn  it  into  a  riddle.  Many  foreign  revolutionists 
out  of  work  added  to  the  general  misunderstanding  their  contribution 
of  broken  English  in  every  most  ingenious  form  of  fracture.  All  stood 
ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to  reform  everything  but  themselves.  The 
general  motto  was :  — 

1  And  we  '11  talk  with  them,  too, 
And  take  upon  's  the  mystery  of  things 
As  if  we  were  God's  spies.'" 

So  long  as  reform  remains  in  this  stage,  it  can  hardly  im 
press  people  of  common-sense  as  worse  than  ridiculous. 
When  reform  becomes  militant,  however,  trouble  heaves  in 
sight ;  and  the  militant  shape  which  New  England  reform  took 
in  the  *4o's  clearly  involved  not  only  a  social  revolution,  but 
an  unprecedented  attack  on  that  general  right  of  property 
which  the  Common  Law  had  always  defended. 

Negro  slavery,  at  one  time  common  to  all  the  English- 
speaking  colonies,  had  died  out  in  the  Northern  States.  During 

4 


THE  ANTISLA  VER  Y  MO  VEMENT        341 

the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  meanwhile,  the 
condition  of  industry  in  the  South  had  tended  to  stimulate  the 
institution  in  that  region  until  it  assumed  unforeseen  social  and 
economic  importance.  Throughout  colonial  history  there  had 
been  considerable  theoretical  objection  to  it,  a  line  of  American 
thought  which  may  be  adequately  traced  by  consulting  the 
index  of  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  u  Library  of  American 
Literature."  Samuel  Sewall  opposed  slavery  ;  so  from  the 
beginning  did  the  Quakers  ;  and  even  in  the  South  itself  there 
were  plenty  of  people  who  saw  its  evils  and  hoped  for  its  dis 
appearance  ;  but  no  thoroughly  organised  movement  against 
it  took  place  until  the  air  of  New  England  freshened  with  the 
spirit  of  its  Renaissance. 

Channing,  who  passed  the  years  from  1798  to  1800  in 
Richmond,  wrote  from  thence  a  letter  which  strikingly  ex 
presses  the  feeling  excited  by  slavery  in  earnest  Unitarians  :  — 

"  There  is  one  object  here  which  always  depresses  me.  It  is  slavery. 
This  alone  would  prevent  me  from  ever  settling  in  Virginia.  Language 
cannot  express  my  detestation  of  it.  Master  and  slave!  Nature 
never  made  such  a  distinction,  or  established  such  a  relation.  Man, 
when  forced  to  substitute  the  will  of  another  for  his  own,  ceases  to  be 
a  moral  agent ;  his  title  to  the  name  of  man  is  extinguished,  he  becomes 
a  mere  machine  in  the  hands  of  his  oppressor.  No  empire  is  so  valu 
able  as  the  empire  of  one's  self.  No  right  is  so  inseparable  from 
humanity,  and  so  necessary  to  the  improvement  of  our  species,  as  the 
right  of  exerting  the  powers  which  nature  has  given  us  in  the  pursuit 
of  any  and  of  every  good  which  we  can  obtain  without  doing  injury  to 
others.  Should  you  desire  it,  I  will  give  you  some  idea  of  the  situa 
tion  and  character  of  the  negroes  in  Virginia.  It  is  a  subject  so 
degrading  to  humanity  that  I  cannot  dwell  on  it  with  pleasure.  I 
should  be  obliged  to  show  you  every  vice,  heightened  by  every  mean 
ness  and  added  to  every  misery.  The  influence  of  slavery  on  the 
whites  is  almost  as  fatal  as  on  the  blacks  themselves." 

To  Channing,  the  conclusion  here  stated  was  unavoidable. 
If  human  beings  are  essentially  good,  they  have  a  natural  right 
to  free  development.  No  form  of  environment  could  more 
impede  such  development  than  lifelong  slavery.  When  any 


342     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

honest  Unitarian  was  brought  face  to  face  with  slavery,  then, 
he  was  confronted  with  a  dilemma.  Either  this  thing  was  a 
monstrous  denial  of  fundamental  truth,  or  else  the  negroes 
were  not  human.  Something  like  the  latter  view  was  cer 
tainly  held  by  many  good  people.  In  the  South,  indeed,  it 
became  almost  axiomatic.  In  Mark  Twain's  "  Huckleberry 
Finn  "  there  is  an  admirably  compact  expression  of  this  tem 
per.  A  boy,  drawing  the  long  bow,  tells  a  simple-hearted 
and  charitable  woman  that  the  boiler  of  a  steamer  has  just 
exploded. 

"  '  Good  gracious  ! '  she  exclaims,  '  anybody  hurt  ?  * 

" '  No,  'm.     Killed  a  nigger.' 

"  '  Well,  it 's  lucky ;  because  sometimes  people  do  get  hurt.'  " 

With  which  sigh  of  relief  the  good  creature  goes  on  to  relate 
some  melancholy  experiences  of  the  boy's  Uncle  Silas. 

It  is  hardly  extreme  to  say,  however,  that  this  opinion  is 
more  consonant  with  New  England  temper  to-day  than  it  was 
seventy  years  ago.  Modern  ethnology  seems  to  recognise  a 
pretty  marked  distinction  between  human  beings  in  the  Stone 
Age  and  human  beings  as  developed  into  the  civilisation  of 
the  nineteenth  century  ;  and  though  native  Africans  are  not 
literally  neolithic,  they  certainly  linger  far  behind  the  social 
stage  which  has  been  reached  by  modern  Europe  or  America. 
To  philanthropic  people  in  1830,  on  the  other  hand,  the  dis 
tinction  between  Caucasians  and  Africans  seemed  literally  a 
question  of  complexion.  Men  they  believed  to  be  incarnate 
souls ;  and  the  colour  which  a  soul  happened  to  assume  they 
held  a  mere  accident. 

Accordingly,  a  full  nine  years  before  the  foundation  of  the 
"  Dial,"  there  was  unflinchingly  established  in  Boston  a  news 
paper,  which  until  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  remained  the 
official  organ  of  the  New  England  antislavery  men.  This  was 
the  "  Liberator,"  founded  in  1831  by  William  Lloyd  Garri 
son,  then  only  twenty-six  years  old.  Born  of  the  poorer  classes 


THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT       343 

at  Newburyport  in  1805,  by  trade  a  printer,  by  temperament 
an  uncompromising  reformer,  he  was  stirred  from  youth  by 
a  deep  conviction  that  slavery  must  be  uprooted.  When  he 
founded  the  "  Liberator,"  he  had  already  made  himself  con 
spicuous  ;  but  the  educated  classes  thought  him  insignificant. 
In  1833  he  was  a  principal  founder  of  the  Antislavery  Society 
in  Philadelphia.  From  that  time,  the  movement  strength 
ened.  Garrison  died  in  1879.  For  the  last  fifteen  years  of 
his  life  he  was  held,  as  he  is  held  by  tradition,  a  great 
national  hero,  a  man  who  stood  for  positive  right,  who  won 
his  cause,  who  deserves  unquestioning  admiration,  and  whose 
opponents  merit  equally  unquestioning  contempt. 

So  complete  a  victory  has  rarely  been  the  lot  of  any  earthly 
reformer,  and  there  are  aspects  in  which  Garrison  deserves 
all  the  admiration  accorded  to  his  memory.  Fanatical, 
of  course,  he  was  absolutely  sincere  in  his  fanaticism,  abso 
lutely  devoted  and  absolutely  brave.  What  is  more,  he  is  to 
be  distinguished  from  most  Americans  who  in  his  earlier  days 
had  attained  eminence  and  influence  by  the  fact  that  he  never 
had  the  advantage  or  limit,  as  you  will,  of  such  educational 
training  as  should  enable  him  to  see  more  than  one  side  of  a 
question.  The  greatest  strength  of  an  honest,  uneducated 
reformer  lies  in  his  unquestioning  singleness  of  view.  He 
really  believes  those  who  oppose  him  to  be  as  wicked  as  he 
believes  himself  to  be  good.  What  moral  strength  is  inherent 
in  congenitally  blind  conviction  is  surely  and  honourably  his. 

But  because  Garrison  was  honest,  brave,  and  strenuous, 
and  because  long  before  his  life  closed,  the  movement  to  which 
he  unreservedly  gave  his  energy  proved  triumphant,  it  does 
not  follow  that  the  men  who  opposed  him  were  wicked.  To 
understand  the  temper  of  the  conservative  people  of  New 
England  we  must  stop  for  a  moment,  and  see  how  slavery 
presented  itself  to  them  during  the  years  of  the  antislavery 
struggle. 

In  the  first  place,  the  institution  of  slavery  was   honestly 


344     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

regarded  by  many  people  as  one  phase  of  the  more  compre 
hensive  institution  which  really  lies  at  the  basis  of  modern 
civilisation  ;  namely,  property.  Property  in  any  form  involves 
deprivation.  Property  in  land,  for  example,  deprives  many 
human  beings  of  access  to  many  portions  of  the  earth,  and 
still  more  of  liberty  to  cultivate  it  and  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of 
their  labours.  Property  in  corporations  involves  the  payment 
of  interest  to  those  who  possess  capital,  and  this  payment  cer 
tainly  impresses  many  worthy  labouring  men  as  wantonly  sub 
tracted  from  their  earnings.  So  in  our  own  day  we  have  seen 
many  honest  attacks  on  property,  not  only  in  land,  but  in 
every  form  of  corporations.  Once  for  all,  we  may  admit  that 
there  is  some  ground  for  these  moral  crusades.  So  far  as  prop 
erty  involves  deprivation  and  incidentally  results  in  grinding 
hardships,  property  involves  evil.  On  the  other  hand,  it  always 
involves  a  great  deal  of  good.  Take,  for  example,  not  private 
persons  whose  incomes  exceed  their  actual  needs,  but  public 
institutions  which  are  unquestioningly  regarded  as  vitally  im 
portant  to  the  general  welfare,  such  as  universities  or  libraries. 
To  do  their  service  to  learning  and  wisdom,  these  need  incomes. 
They  must  possess  investments  which  shall  return  a  certain 
annual  percentage ;  otherwise  their  work  must  stop.  Very 
good :  is  the  suffering  and  inequality  involved  in  property, 
when  property  takes  the  form  of  land  or  shares,  an  evil  so 
serious  as  to  counterbalance  the  good  done  to  civilisation  by 
institutions  of  learning  ?  Some  admirable  people,  holding 
property  essentially  wrong,  declare  that  it  is ;  most  men  of 
hard  sense,  who  may  be  taken  as  a  type  of  the  conservative 
classes,  maintain  the  contrary. 

The  conviction  that  slavery,  whatever  its  evils,  was  really  a 
form  of  property,  and  that  an  attack  on  slavery  therefore  in 
volved  a  general  attack  on  the  whole  basis  of  civilisation,  was 
one  of  the  strongest  convictions  of  conservative  New  England. 
In  many  minds  which  abhorred  the  evils  of  slavery,  furthermore, 
this  conviction  was  strengthened  by  an  equally  honest  one  that 


THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT        345 

when  you  have  made  a  bargain  you  should  stick  to  it.  The 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  presenting  itself  more 
and  more  in  the  light  of  an  agreement  between  two  incom 
patible  sets  of  economic  institutions,  assuring  to  each  the  right 
freely  to  exist  within  its  own  limits.  The  fact  that  as  a  man 
of  business  you  have  given  a  note  to  some  one  whose  per 
sonal  morals  you  believe  deplorable,  is  no  reason  why  your  note 
should  not  be  paid.  Among  the  conservative  classes  of  New 
England,  then,  the  antislavery  movement  seemed  as  threaten 
ing  to  the  Union  as  to  property  itself.  Whatever  threatened 
Union  or  property,  they  conceived,  clearly  threatened  civilisa 
tion,  and  on  civilisation  rests  all  that  is  best  in  human  life  or 
human  society  ;  for  civilisation  is  the  mother  of  ideals. 

A  third  consideration,  also,  had  great  weight  among  thought 
ful  people.  During  the  French  Revolution  the  negroes  of  the 
French  colonies  in  the  West  Indies  had  effected  the  triumph 
ant  insurrection  which  resulted  in  the  still  existing  republics  of 
San  Domingo  and  Hayti ;  and  in  1830  there  were  gentlemen 
in  New  England  who  personally  remembered  the  horrors  of 
that  tragic  time.  The  blacks  had  risen  in  overwhelming 
numbers  ;  white  males  they  had  slaughtered ;  their  wives  and 
daughters,  often  women  educated  under  the  gentlest  influences 
of  France  during  the  Old  Regime,  they  had  done  to  death 
more  cruelly  still.  To  cite  a  single  instance,  recorded  by  a 
Boston  gentleman  who  escaped  from  San  Domingo  with  his 
life :  "  The  women,  old  and  young,  were  collected  together 
on  the  floor  of  a  church  about  twelve  or  fifteen  miles  from  the 
Cape,  where  many  of  them  fortunately  died  under  the  brutal 
ity  to  which  they  were  subjected."  Something  of  the  same 
kind,  on  a  very  small  scale,  has  lately  resulted  in  that  deplor 
able  lynching  of  Southern  negroes  which  so  puzzles  unthinking 
Northern  minds.  To  the  conservative  classes  of  old  New 
England,  in  short,  —  to  the  men  whom  Gilbert  Stuart  had 
painted,  and  their  sons,  —  the  antislavery  movement  not  only 
meant  an  attack  on  property,  the  institution  on  which  civilisa- 


346     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

tion  is  based  ;  it  not  only  proposed  a  violation  of  the  Con 
stitution,  the  compact  on  which  our  political  security  rests  ; 
but  in  all  probability  it  threatened  to  abandon  the  white 
women  of  half  a  continent  to  the  lust  of  brutal  savages. 

When  at  last,  then,  the  antislavery  movement  began  to 
gather  disturbing  force,  this  conservative  opposition  to  it  was  as 
violent,  as  sincere,  as  deep,  and  in  many  aspects  as  admirable, 
as  was  the  movement  itself.  But  the  fact  that  the  conserva 
tive  temper  of  New  England  was  not,  as  some  antislavery 
men  asserted,  wicked,  in  no  way  involves  what  conservative 
New  England  passionately  proclaimed,  —  namely,  wickedness 
on  the  part  of  the  antislavery  men  themselves.  The  truth  is 
that  an  irrepressible  social  conflict  was  at  hand,  and  that  both 
sides  were  as  honourable  as  were  both  sides  during  the  Ameri 
can  Revolution,  or  during  the  Civil  Wars  of  England.  To 
the  extreme  antislavery  men  civilisation  appeared  a  secondary 
consideration  when  human  rights  were  concerned.  Property  ? 
If  property  cannot  protect  itself,  away  with  property  !  The 
Constitution  ?  If  the  Constitution  is  a  compact  with  Hell, 
let  the  Constitution  fall !  Liken  it,  if  you  will,  to  wedlock  ; 
there  are  phases  of  wedlock  more  sinful  than  any  divorce. 
And  as  for  the  lust  of  the  negro,  why,  the  negro  is  human, 
and  human  nature  is  excellent !  Enfranchise  him,  and  God 
may  be  trusted  to  bring  about  the  millennium.  During  the 
earlier  phases  of  the  antislavery  movement  it  produced  no 
pure  literature  \  but  it  did  excite  the  most  characteristic  utter 
ances  of  at  least  three  orators  who  are  still  remembered  among 
public  speakers. 

The  one  of  these  who  most  clearly  marks  the  relation  of  the 
antislavery  movement  to  Unitarianism  and  Transcendentalism 
was  the  Reverend  Theodore  Parker.  Born  of  country  folk 
at  Lexington,  Massachusetts,  in  1810,  he  graduated  at  Har 
vard  in  1834,  and  in  1837  ne  became  a  Unitarian  minister. 
In  the  history  of  Unitarianism,  he  has  a  prominent  place ;  in 
the  history  of  Transcendentalism,  too,  for  his  writings  are 


THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT        347 

among  the  most  vigorously  specific  in  the  u  Dial,"  to  which 
he  was  a  constant  contributor ;  but  his  most  solid  strength  lay 
in  his  scholarship.  There  have  been  few  men  in  New  Eng 
land  whose  learning  has  equalled  his  in  range  and  in  vitality. 
The  manner  in  which  his  ardent  nature  impelled  him  to  ex 
press  himself,  however,  was  so  far  from  what  is  generally 
characteristic  of  scholars  that  in  popular  memory  his  scholar 
ship  has  almost  been  forgotten.  As  a  Unitarian  minister, 
Parker  is  remembered  mostly  for  having  carried  individual 
preaching  to  its  most  unflinching  conclusions.  So  far  as  one 
can  judge,  this  preaching  was  actuated  by  unswerving  devo 
tion  to  what  he  believed  true.  The  range  of  his  scholarship 
had  made  him  familiar  with  thousands  of  facts  which  seemed 
inconsistent  with  many  forms  of  Christian  tradition.  These 
he  unhesitatingly  preached  with  a  fervid  eloquence  which  even 
in  his  own  days,  when  New  England  oratory  was  at  its  height, 
commanded  unusual  attention.  His  teaching  consequently 
carried  Unitarianism  so  far  from  orthodox  Christianity,  in  days 
when  the  Higher  Criticism  was  still  to  come,  that  he  did  more 
than  any  other  man  to  frighten  less  daring  spirits  into  the 
Episcopal  communion,  which  now  maintains  alliance  with 
the  ancestral  church  of  England.  As  a  Transcendentalist, 
Parker's  enthusiastic  and  active  temperament  made  him  far 
more  reformer  than  philosopher.  He  was  content  to  let  others 
pry  into  the  secrets  of  the  ideal  eternities.  What  chiefly  in 
terested  him  were  the  lines  of  conduct  which  men  ought  to 
follow  in  view  of  the  new  floods  of  light ;  and  among  these 
lines  of  conduct  none  seemed  to  him  so  important  as  that 
which  should  lead  straightest  to  the  abolition  of  slavery.  He 
never  lived  to  see  his  passionate  purpose  accomplished.  In 
tense  activity  broke  down  his  health  ;  he  died  and  was  buried 
at  Florence,  whither  he  had  gone  for  recuperation,  in  the 
spring  of  1860. 

Among  his  virtues  and  graces  was  not  that  of  sympathy 
with  opponents;  and  when  it  came  to  public  utterances  on 


348     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NE  W  ENGLAND 

the  subject  of  abolition  he  indulged  himself  in  a  freedom  of 
personal  vituperation  which,  after  the  lapse  of  half  a  century, 
seems  extreme.  For  this  might  be  pleaded  the  excuse  that 
Theodore  Parker,  like  Garrison,  sprang  from  that  lower  class 
of  New  England  which  never  intimately  understood  its  social 
superiors.  A  self-made  man,  however  admirable,  can  rarely 
quite  outgrow  all  the  limitations  of  his  origin.  No  such  ex 
cuse  may  be  pleaded  for  the  two  other  antislavery  orators  who 
are  best  remembered, —  Wendell  Phillips  and  Charles  Sumner. 
Born  in  the  same  year,  1811,  both  of  these  survived  to  hear 
the  emancipation  proclamation  of  1863.  Sumner  remained 
an  eminent  member  of  the  United  States  Senate  until  his 
death  in  1874.  Phillips  survived  ten  years  longer,  but  for 
the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  he  did  little  else  than  exhibit 
the  somewhat  senile  vagaries  of  a  character  whose  leading 
passion  seems  to  have  become  an  ardour  for  disagreement 
with  mankind. 

Phillips  was  born  of  the  oldest  New  England  gentry. 
Kinsmen  of  his  had  founded  the  academies  of  Exeter  and  An- 
dover,  and  his  father  had  been  the  first  Mayor  of  the  city  of 
Boston  at  a  time  when  political  power  there  still  resided  in 
the  hands  of  a  few  leading  families.  He  graduated  at  Harvard 
College  in  1831,  and  in  1834  he  was  admitted  to  the  bar.  A 
man  of  extremely  active  and  combative  temperament,  he  sin 
cerely  wished  to  practise  his  profession  ;  but  his  position  during 
the  next  two  or  three  years  was  one  frequent  with  young 
gentlemen  of  position  and  fortune.  People  who  had  legal 
business  either  gave  it  to  established  members  of  the  bar,  or 
else  preferred  young  men  who  had  the  luck  to  need  fees  for 
their  support.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  Phillips's  failure 
to  obtain  practice  did  something  to  arouse  that  sentiment  of 
opposition  to  his  social  equals  which  characterised  his  later 
life.  A  college  classmate  used  to  tell  a  story  of  him  in  1837. 
For  three  years  he  had  been  a  briefless  barrister,  and  his  class 
mate,  meeting  him  in  the  street,  asked  him  good-humouredly 


THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT       349 

whether  he  had  yet  found  any  clients.  Phillips's  eyes  flashed 
angrily  :  "  No,"  he  said  5  u  and  if  they  don't  come  soon,  I 
shall  take  up  a  cause." 

It  was  not  long  after  the  time  of  this  probably  apocryphal 
anecdote  that  a  meeting  was  held  in  Faneuil  Hall,  where 
among  other  speakers  the  Attorney-General  of  Massachusetts 
defended  the  action  of  a  western  mob  which  in  a  frenzy  of 
resentment  had  taken  the  life  of  Lovejoy,  a  very  outspoken 
Abolitionist  who  had  invaded  their  part  of  the  country.  Phil 
lips  was  in  the  audience  ;  he  interrupted  the  speaker,  made 
his  way  to  the  platform,  and  then  and  there  delivered  an  anti- 
slavery  outburst  which  carried  the  audience  by  storm.  So, 
having  publicly  declared  war  against  society,  by  passionately 
inciting  a  public  meeting  to  disregard  the  authority  of  that 
governing  class  to  which  he  himself  hereditarily  belonged,  he 
embarked  on  a  lifelong  demagogic  career. 

There  can  be  little  question  that  he  believed  himself  to 
believe  in  the  antislavery  cause  which,  with  full  knowledge  of 
the  social  sacrifice  involved,  he  chose  to  advocate  when  less 
than  thirty  years  old.  Nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  that  the 
course  of  political  agitation  which  he  thus  deliberately  began, 
in  the  midst  of  a  society  dominated  by  traditional  conservatism, 
demanded  rare  courage,  physical  and  moral  alike.  For  not 
only  was  he  exposed  to  danger  of  personal  violence  from  those 
considerable  portions  of  the  lower  classes  who  were  at  first 
disposed  to  disagree  with  him,  but  he  knew  that  the  price  he 
must  pay  for  lifelong  demagogism  was  to  be  regarded  as  an 
unprincipled  fanatic  by  the  people  whom  he  would  naturally 
have  found  most  sympathetic.  Throughout,  too,  his  oratory 
was  highly  finished.  A  man  of  distinguished  personal  appear 
ance,  with  all  the  grace  and  formal  restraint  of  hereditary 
breeding,  he  had  mastered,  to  a  rare  degree,  the  subtle  art  of 
first  winning  the  sympathy  of  audiences,  and  then  leading 
them,  for  the  moment  unresisting,  to  points  where,  on  waking 
from  his  spell,  they  were  astonished  to  find  themselves.  Many 


350     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

people,  particularly  of  the  less  educated  sort,  ended  by  yielding 
themselves  to  his  power.  Of  the  better  sort,  more  grew  to 
feel  that  at  heart  this  power  was  only  the  consummate  adroit 
ness  of  a  man  so  impatient  of  rivalry  as  recklessly  to  indulge 
his  inordinate  passion  for  momentary  dominance.  His  speeches 
were  true  speeches.  In  print,  lacking  the  magic  of  his  deliv 
ery,  they  are  like  the  words  of  songs  which  for  lyric  excellence 
need  the  melodies  to  which  they  have  once  been  wedded. 
Whoever  heard  him  speak  remembers  his  performance  with 
admiration.  As  the  years  pass,  however,  this  admiration  often 
proves  qualified  by  suspicion  that,  with  the  light  which  was 
his,  he  might  have  refrained  from  those  denunciations  of  estab 
lished  order  which,  to  conservative  thinking,  still  do  mischief. 

Like  Phillips,  the  other  Bostonian  orator  whose  name  is 
associated  with  the  antislavery  movement  sacrificed  his 
social  career  to  his  principles.  He  did  this,  however,  rather 
less  deliberately ;  and  throughout  his  life  displayed  a  density 
of  perception  concerning  his  personal  relation  with  the  people 
whom  in  public  utterances  he  violently  denounced.  Charles 
Sumner  was  born  of  a  respectable  family  at  Boston  in  1811  ; 
he  graduated  at  Harvard,  became  a  lawyer,  and  before  the  age 
of  thirty  had  spent  three  years  in  Europe,  where  he  made 
permanent  friendships.  A  man  of  fine  and  cultivated  tastes, 
he  appears  at  his  best  in  the  records  of  his  lifelong  intimacy 
with  the  poet  Longfellow.  Like  Phillips's,  his  career  began 
as  one  which  might  have  been  expected  to  carry  on  the  old 
traditions  of  the  cultivated  classes  of  New  England ;  but  he 
early  found  himself  stirred  by  his  fervent  belief  in  the  moral 
wrong  of  slavery.  Sumner's  sincere  devotion  to  principle 
seems  beyond  question.  The  violence  with  which  he  per 
mitted  himself  to  abuse  those  who  did  not  share  his  opinions, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  still  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  fact 
that,  unlike  Phillips,  he  felt  personally  aggrieved  when  they 
struck  him  off"  their  visiting  lists. 

This  license  of  speech  brought  on  Sumner  the  assault  which 


THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT        351 

nearly  made  him  a  martyr.  In  1856  he  was  a  Senator  from 
Massachusetts.  During  a  debate  which  concerned  slavery,  he 
denounced  one  of  the  Senators  from  South  Carolina  in  terms 
which  abroad,  or  in  our  Southern  States  forty  years  ago,  must 
inevitably  have  led  to  a  duel.  Personal  abuse,  indeed,  could 
hardly  have  gone  to  greater  length.  As  a  New  England 
man,  Sumner  was  beyond  the  reach  of  a  challenge,  which  it 
was  assumed,  with  probable  justice,  that  he  would  have  handed 
over  to  the  police,  by  way  of  binding  the  challenger  to  keep 
the  peace.  Accordingly,  a  relative  of  the  distinguished  old 
man  whom  he  had  attacked  took  the  law  into  his  own  hands ; 
and  entering  the  Senate  Chamber,  struck  Sumner  with  a  heavy 
cane  and  almost  killed  him.  Northern  sentiment  has  always 
held  this  an  act  of  brutal  cowardice.  To  the  mind  of  the 
assailant,  on  the  other  hand,  Sumner  undoubtedly  seemed  a 
malignant  creature,  who  had  ventured  on  scurrility  only  be 
cause  the  opinions  of  his  constituents  forbade  him  to  risk  his 
skin  on  the  field  of  honour.  The  first  blow,  to  be  sure,  was 
struck  from  behind ;  it  was  struck,  however,  in  the  most 
public  place  in  America;  and,  on  the  whole,  Southern  senti 
ment  seems  to  have  approved  it.  As  detailed  in  the  second 
volume  of  Mr.  Rhodes's  "History  of  the  United  States," 
Sumner's  blindly  devoted  virulence,  on  the  one  hand,  and  his 
assailant's  conscientious  violence,  on  the  other,  so  startlingly 
indicate  how  Northern  temper  had  diverged  from  Southern 
toward  the  time  of  the  Civil  War  that  the  affair  deserves 
our  momentary  attention.  Our  immediate  concern,  however, 
is  rather  with  that  State  of  Massachusetts  which  Sumner  con 
tinued  to  represent  in  the  Senate  until  his  death  in  1874. 

To  suppose  that  all  antislavery  people  were  scurrilous  or 
demagogic  would  be  as  mistaken  as  to  suppose  them  saints. 
From  the  beginning  there  was  in  Boston  a  growing  company 
of  self-controlled  antislavery  men  who  deplored  the  unbridled 
harangues  of  militant  reformers  as  sincerely  as  conservative 
people  deplored  the  evils  of  slavery  itself.  So  when  the  anti- 


352     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

slavery  movement  became  politically  potent  in  New  England, 
there  were  many  admirable  people  who  did  not  hesitate  to 
suffer  the  penalty  of  social  disfavour  involved  in  conscientious 
adherence  to  a  principle  whose  most  conspicuous  advocates 
went  to  extremes  which  seemed  to  warrant  it.  The  whole 
period  has  now  passed  into  history.  The  better  classes  of 
Boston  have  long  forgotten  the  prejudices  which  for  a  while 
deprived  them  of  social  relations  with  certain  families  now, 
as  they  always  deserved  to  be,  honourably  distinguished.  These 
same  better  classes,  however,  with  their  deep  conservative  con 
victions,  never  quite  forgave  the  violent  utterances  of  Parker 
and  Phillips  and  Sumner;  they  have  never  quite  done  justice 
to  the  fiery  enthusiasm  which  might  hardly  have  expressed  it 
self  more  reticently ;  they  have  been  apt  to  forget  that  their 
own  denunciations  of  antislavery  men  were  thoughtlessly  un 
measured  ;  and  they  have  never  forgotten  that  the  ultimate 
dominance  of  the  antislavery  movement  coincided  with  the 
final  passing  of  political  leadership  in  Massachusetts  into  the 
hands  of  another  social  class  than  that  educated  gentry  who 
had  retained  it  through  all  previous  commotions  from  the 
foundation  of  the  Puritan  colony. 

But  all  this  is  not  literature.  We  come  now  to  a  book 
produced  by  the  antislavery  movement,  which  suddenly 
proved  that  movement  popular.  This  was  Mrs.  Stowe's 
"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  published  in  1852,  the  year  after 
Sumner  had  entered  the  Senate  from  Massachusetts,  and  two 
years  after  Webster's  Seventh  of  March  Speech. 

Mrs.  Stowe  came  of  a  family  which  during  the  middle  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century  was  noteworthy.  To  understand  its 
peculiar  position  we  must  recall  how  the  victory  of  Unitarianism 
in  eastern  Massachusetts  had  involved  the  social  overthrow  of 
orthodox  Calvinism.  Lyman  Beecher,  father  of  Mrs.  Stowe, 
was  born  in  Connecticut  just  at  the  beginning  of  the  Revo 
lution.  Graduated  at  Yale  under  President  Dwight,  he  be 
came  a  Congregational  minister  in  his  native  State.  In  1826 


THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT        353 

he  removed  to  Boston,  where  for  six  years  his  rudely  energetic 
power  proclaimed  Calvinism  in  a  stronghold  of  Unitarianism, 
which  found  his  orthodoxy  as  offensive  as  Unitarianism  itself 
would  then  have  been  found  in  England. 

At  one  in  their  deepest  convictions  with  the  historical 
traditions  of  New  England  religion,  the  Beechers  conse 
quently  found  themselves  fiercely  at  war  with  the  established, 
emancipated  society  in  which  they  lived.  This  state  of 
spirited,  paradoxical  conflict  was  favourable  to  the  develop 
ment  of  their  considerable  eccentricity.  The  most  eminent 
of  Mrs.  Stowe's  brothers,  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  a  devoted 
antislavery  man,  and  the  most  popular  American  preacher  of 
his  day,  queerly  combined  orthodoxy  with  liberalism ;  he  was 
almost  equally  eminent  for  unquestionable  power  and  for  ques 
tionable  taste ;  but  his  career  belongs  to  the  history  neither  of 
literature  nor  of  New  England.  It  culminated,  as  is  gener 
ally  remembered,  in  his  many  years'  pastorate  of  that  Ply 
mouth  Church  in  Brooklyn,  New  York,  which  kept  within 
the  forms  of  orthodoxy  an  enormous  congregation  of  the  less 
educated  sort. 

Harriet  Beecher,  in  literature  the  most  distinguished  of  her 
family,  was  born  at  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  where  her  father 
was  settled,  in  1812.  In  1832  her  father  removed  from 
Boston  to  Cincinnati,  where  for  twenty  years  he  was  the 
President  of  a  theological  seminary.  Here,  in  1836,  Harriet 
Beecher  married  the  Reverend  Calvin  Stowe,  who,  like  her 
self,  had  ardent  antislavery  sympathies.  They  were  poor, 
and  their  marriage  was  prolific.  In  ordinary  domestic  duties 
Mrs.  Stowe  had  more  to  do  than  most  women ;  but  her  activ- 
Jty  was  such  that  throughout  her  busiest  domestic  days  her 
mind  was  constantly  though  not  systematically  occupied  with 
the  reform  which  she  did  so  much  to  further.  Living  for 
years  just  on  the  borderland  of  the  slave  States  and  the  free, 
she  acquired  a  personal  familiarity  with  slavery  shared  by  few 
Northern  people  ;  and  at  odd  times  she  was  constantly  prao 

23 


354     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

tising  her  pen.  In  1850,  the  year  of  Webster's  Seventh  of 
March  Speech,  her  husband  was  appointed  a  professor  at 
Bowdoin  College.  At  Brunswick,  Maine,  then,  in  1851  and 
1852,  Mrs.  Stowe  wrote  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  the  object 
of  which  was  to  set  forth  in  concrete  form  the  actual  horrors 
of  slavery.  At  first  little  noticed,  this  book  rapidly  attracted 
popular  attention.  During  the  next  five  years  above  half  a 
million  copies  were  sold  in  the  United  States  alone  \  and  it 
is  hardly  excessive  to  say  that  wherever  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  "  went,  public  conscience  was  aroused. 

Written  carelessly,  and  full  of  crudities,  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,"  even  after  forty-eight  years,  remains  a  remarkable 
piece  of  fiction.  The  truth  is,  that  almost  unawares  Mrs. 
/Stowe  had  in  her  the  stufF  of  which  good  novelists  are  made. 
i  Her  plot,  to  be  sure,  is  conventional  and  rambling  ;  but  her 
characters,  even  though  little  studied  in  detail,  have  a  perva 
sive  vitality  which  no  study  can  achieve;  you  unhesitatingly 
accept  them  as  real.  V  Her  descriptive  power,  meanwhile,  was 
such  as  to  make  equally  convincing  the  backgrounds  in  which 
her  action  and  her  characters  move.  What  is  more,  these 
backgrounds,  most  of  which  she  knew  from  persona)  experi 
ence,  are  probably  so  faithful  to  actual  nature  that  the  local 
sentiment  aroused  as  you  read  them  may  generally  be  accepted 
as  true.  And  though  Mrs.  Stowe's  book  was  written  in  spare 
moments,  almost  anyhow,  amid  the  distractions  of  housekeep 
ing  and  of  a  growing  family,  her  careless  style  is  often  strong 
and  vivid. 

Should  any  one  doubt  Mrs.  Stowe's  power  as  a  writer,  re 
membering  only  that  in  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  she  achieved 
a  great  popular  success,  partly  caused  by  the  changing  public 
opinion  of  her  day,  we  need  only  glance  at  some  of  her  later 
work  to  make  sure  that  she  had  in  her  a  power  which,  if  cir 
cumstances  had  permitted  its  development,  might  have  given 
her  a  distinguished  place  in  English  fiction.  Her  best  book 
is  probably  "Old  Town  Folks,"  published  in  1869.  Like 


THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT        355 

all  her  work,  this  rambling  story  of  life  near  Boston  about  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  careless  in  detail  and 
very  uneven.  As  you  consider  it,  however,  you  grow  to  feel 
that  above  almost  any  other  accessible  book  u  Old  Town 
Folks "  sets  forth  the  circumstances  and  the  temper  of  the 
native  Yankee  people.  What  is  more,  the  carefully  deliberate 
passages — the  opening  chapters,  for  example — are  written 
in  a  manner  which  approaches  excellence.  In  brief,  Mrs. 
Stowe  differed  from  most  American  novelists  in  possessing  a 
spark  of  genius.  Had  this  genius  pervaded  her  work,  she 
might  have  been  a  figure  of  lasting  literary  importance. 

Even  as  it  was,  she  had  power  enough  to  make  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin "  the  most  potent  literary  force  of  the  anti- 
slavery  days.  She  differed  from  most  Abolitionists  in  having 
observed  on  the  spot  all  the  tragic  evils  of  slavery.  Until 
the  publication  of  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  slavery  had  on  the 
whole  presented  itself  to  the  North  as  a  deplorable  abstrac 
tion.  Wherever  the  book  went,  —  and  it  went  so  far  that 
to  this  day  dramatised  versions  of  it  are  said  to  be  popular  in 
the  country,  —  it  awakened  this  abstraction  into  life,  much  as 
powerful  preaching  sometimes  awakens  a  dormant  sentiment  of 
religion.  Of  course,  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  is  partisan,  but 
it  is  honestly  so ;  and  if,  as  occasionally  seems  the  case,  the 
negro  characters  are  so  white  at  heart  that  there  is  a  certain 
fitness  in  their  dramatic  representation  by  people  with  tempo 
rarily  blackened  faces,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Mrs.  Stowe 
believed  her  negroes  as  true  to  life  as  later,  and  rightly,  she 
believed  the  Yankees  of  "  Old  Town  Folks."  Whatever  you 
may  think  of  u  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  you  can  never  truly 
feel  it  to  have  been  instigated  by  a  demagogic  purpose.  It 
was  written  by  one  who,  like  the  men  who  maintained  anti- 
slavery  principles  amid  every  social  obloquy  and  could  never 
have  foreseen  their  final  popularity,  was  profoundly  convinced 
that  her  cause  was  supremely  true. 

"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  was  published  in   1852.     To  its 


356     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

unprecedented  popularity  may  be  perhaps  traced  the  final  turn 
of  the  public  tide.  After  ten  years  the  conflict  between  the 
slave  States  and  the  free  reached  the  inevitable  point  of  civil 
war.  The  1st  of  January,  1863,  saw  that  final  proclamation 
of  emancipation  which,  by  confiscating,  as  virtually  contra 
band  property,  all  slaves  in  the  States  which  were  then  in 
arms  against  the  Federal  government,  practically  achieved  the 
end  for  which  the  antislavery  men  had  unfalteringly  striven. 

Into  political  history  we  cannot  enter.  For  obvious  reasons 
there  has  arisen  during  the  last  twenty-five  years  an  anti- 
slavery  legend,  which  has  cast  into  an  obloquy  as  deep  as  ever 
Abolitionists  suffered  the  memory  of  every  opposition  to  these 
men,  whose  chief  heroism  lay  in  their  unflinching  devotion 
to  unpopular  principle.  In  so  far  as  this  legend  has  led  the 
growing  generation  of  American  youth  to  assume  that  because 
you  happen  to  think  a  given  form  of  property  wrong,  you 
have  a  natural  right  to  confiscate  it  forthwith,  the  antislavery 
movement  has  perhaps  tended  to  weaken  the  security  of 
American  institutions.  At  least  in  Massachusetts,  too,  the 
prevalence  of  this  movement  seems  permanently  to  have 
lowered  the  personal  dignity  of  public  life,  by  substituting  for 
the  traditional  rule  of  the  conservative  gentry  the  obvious 
dominance  of  the  less  educated  classes.  These  shadows  on 
the  picture  have  been  so  generally  neglected  that  we  have 
perhaps  allowed  ourselves  to  dwell  on  them  unduly.  As  fact 
begins  to  fade  into  history,  it  is  sometimes  the  critical  aspects 
of  it  which  the  world  proves  apt  for  a  while  to  forget. 

No  doubt  the  evil  of  slavery  was  real ;  no  doubt  the  spirit 
in  which  the  antislavery  movement  attacked  it  was  conscien 
tious,  brave,  in  many  aspects  heroic  ;  but  neither  can  there  be 
doubt  that  the  antislavery  leaders  of  New  England  were  of 
different  origin  from  the  Southerners  whom  they  denounced, 
and  that  they  mostly  knew  only  by  report  the  things  which  they 
abhorred.  In  the  history  of  the  South,  for  one  thing,  social 
and  intellectual  development  had  proceeded  more  slowly  than 


THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT        357 

in  the  North.  The  social  and  intellectual  development  of 
America  has  never  proceeded  so  fast  as  that  of  England. 
The  England  of  King  William  III.  was  far  more  different 
from  the  England  of  Queen  Elizabeth  than  was  the  Boston 
of  Joseph  Dudley  from  that  of  John  Winthrop.  In  the  same 
way  there  was  far  more  likeness  between  the  Southern  States  of 
President  Buchanan's  time  and  the  Southern  States  of  General 
Washington's  than  between  the  New  England  of  1860  and 
the  New  England  of  1789.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  Civil 
War,  indeed,  the  South  still  lingered  in  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury  ;  and  at  least  in  New  England  the  force  of  what  we 
have  called  its  Renaissance  was  bringing  men  nearer  to  the 
contemporary  nineteenth  century  of  Europe  than  anything 
American  between  1650  and  1800  had  ever  been  to  any 
Europe  contemporary  with  itself. 

Yet  in  the  fact  that  the  impulses  of  the  New  England 
reformers  to  set  the  world  right  finally  concentrated  themselves 
on  the  affairs  of  other  people,  and  not  on  their  own,  there 
proves  to  be  a  trait  which  reveals  how  little  the  temper  of 
New  England  has  ever  strayed  from  the  temper  of  the  mother 
country.  For  no  peculiarity  has  been  more  characteristic  of 
the  native  English  than  a  passion  to  reform  other  people  than 
themselves,  trusting  meantime  that  God  will  help  those  who 
forcibly  help  somebody  else. 


IX 

JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIER 

AMONG  the  antislavery  leaders  of  Massachusetts  was  one  who, 
with  the  passing  of  time,  seems  more  and  more  distinguished  as 
a  man  of  letters.  John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  born  at  Haverhill, 
Massachusetts,  in  1807,  came  of  sound  country  stock,  remark 
able  only  because  for  several  generations  the  family  had  been 
Quakers.  The  first  New  England  manifestations  of  Quaker 
ism,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  had  taken  an  extravagantly 
fanatical  form,  which  resulted  in  tragedies  still  familiar  to 
tradition.  As  the  Friends  of  New  England  had  settled  down 
into  peaceful  observance  of  their  own  principles,  however,  let 
ting  alone  the  affairs  of  others,  they  had  become  an  inconspicu 
ous,  inoffensive  body,  neglected  by  the  surrounding  orthodoxy. 
Theologically,  they  believed  in  God,  Jesus  Christ,  and  the 
Bible.  The  interpreter  of  the  divine  word  they  found  not  in 
any  established  church  nor  in  any  officially  sanctified  order  of 
ministers,  but  in  the  still,  small  voice  given  to  mankind  by  the 
Heavenly  Father. 

"  To  all  human  beings,  they  held,  God  has  given  an  inner  light,  to 
all  He  speaks  with  a  still  small  voice.  Follow  the  light,  obey  the  voice, 
and  all  will  be  well.  Evil-doers  are  they  who  neglect  the  light  and 
the  voice.  Now  the  light  and  the  voice  are  God's,  so  to  all  who  will 
attend  they  must  ultimately  show  the  same  truth.  If  the  voice  call 
us  to  correct  others,  then,  or  the  light  shine  upon  manifest  evil,  it  is 
God's  will  that  we  smite  error,  if  so  may  be  by  revealing  truth. 
If  those  who  err  be  Friends,  our  duty  bids  us  expostulate  with  them ; 
and  if  they  be  obdurate,  to  present  them  for  discipline,  which  may 
result  in  their  exclusion  from  our  Religious  Society.  The  still  small 
voice,  it  seems,  really  warns  everybody  that  certain  lines  of  conduct 
are  essentially  wrong, —  among  which  are  the  drinking  of  spirits, 
the  frequenting  of  taverns,  indulgence  in  gaming,  the  use  of  oaths,  and 
the  enslavement  of  any  human  being." 


WHITTIER  359 

In  this  faith  there  is  clearly  involved  a  conclusion  at  odds 
with  Calvinism.  To  Quakers,  inasmuch  as  every  man  pos 
sesses  within  himself  the  power  of  seeing  the  inner  light  and 
of  hearing  the  still,  small  voice  of  God,  all  men  are  essentially 
equal.  When  the  antislavery  movement  began,  then,  Whit- 
tier,  a  lifelong  adherent  of  this  traditional  faith,  found  himself 
in  a  relation  to  militant  philanthropy  very  different  from  that 
of  ancestral  Calvinists.  These,  lately  emancipated  by  the  new 
life  of  Unitarianism  and  Transcendentalism,  came  to  the  reform 
with  all  the  hotness  of  head  which  marks  converts.  Whittier, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  inherited  the  principles  to  which  the 
men  with  whom  he  allied  himself  had  been  converted  ;  and  so, 
although  a  lifelong  and  earnest  reformer,  he  is  the  least  irritating 
of  reformers  to  those  who  chance  not  to  agree  with  him. 

Again,  sprung  from  a  class  which  made  his  childhood  liter 
ally  that  of  a  barefoot  boy,  and  growing  up  in  days  when  the 
New  England  country  was  still  pure  in  the  possession  of  an 
unmixed  race  whose  capacity  for  self-government  has  never 
been  surpassed,  Whittier  naturally  and  gently,  without  a  tinge 
of  invidiousness,  could  base  not  only  on  religious  theory,  but 
also  on  personal  inexperience,  his  fervent  faith  in  the  equality 
of  mankind.  In  the  fact  that  throughout  his  connection  with 
the  antislavery  movement  he  unswervingly  advocated  the  use 
of  strictly  constitutional  means  to  bring  about  reform,  there  is 
again  something  deeply  characteristic.  From  the  beginning 
some  abolitionists  were  for  resort  to  force;  but  Whittier  always 
believed  that  their  end  might  be  attained  by  the  ballot.  For, 
after  all,  an  election  is  an  opportunity  given  every  mature 
man  in  the  community,  to  declare  by  his  vote  what  ought  to 
be  done  and  who  ought  to  do  it.  Very  good  ;  if,  as  Whittier's 
faith  taught  him,  God  speaks  to  every  human  being  who  will 
listen,  the  voice  of  the  people,  provided  they  listen  to  the 
voice  within  them,  is  literally  the  voice  of  God.  When  a 
popular  election  goes  wrong,  it  is  only  because  the  people  have 
been  deaf  to  the  divine  whisper  of  truth. 


36o     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Whittier's  youth  was  passed  in  the  Yankee  country.  His 
education  never  went  beyond  country  schools  and  two  terms 
at  the  Haverhill  Academy  ;  but  he  had  a  natural  love  for  lit 
erature.  When  he  was  nineteen  years  old,  a  poem  of  his  was 
printed  in  the  Newburyport  "  Free  Press/'  then  edited  by 
William  Lloyd  Garrison.  At  twenty-one  he  was  already  a 
professional  writer  for  country  newspapers.  At  twenty-three 
he  was  editor  of  the  "  Haverhill  Gazette."  A  year  later  he 
was  made  editor  of  a  paper  in  Hartford,  Connecticut ;  but  his 
health,  never  robust,  troubled  him,  and  he  returned  to  Massa 
chusetts.  In  1831  he  published  his  first  volume,  a  little  book 
of  verses  called  "  New  England  Legends  ;  "  and  during  the 
same  year,  that  in  which  Garrison  established  the  "  Liberator  " 
at  Boston,  he  became  actively  and  ardently  interested  in  the 
movement  against  slavery.  Until  1840  this  kept  him  constantly 
busy ;  in  that  year  he  resigned  his  charge  of  the  "  Pennsyl 
vania  Freeman," — a  journal  devoted  to  the  cause  of  abolition 
in  Philadelphia.  He  removed  to  Amesbury,  Massachusetts, 
where  he  lived  thenceforth.  From  1826  until  the  end,  no 
year  went  by  without  his  publishing  poems.  His  tempera 
ment  was  shy,  and  his  later  life  uneventful.  He  died  just 
across  the  border  of  New  Hampshire  in  1892. 

Though  Whittier  was  precocious,  and  his  literary  career 
extended  over  more  than  sixty-five  years,  he  was  not  prolific,, 
He  never  wrote  much  at  a  time,  and  he  never  wrote  anything 
long.  In  the  seven  volumes  of  his  collected  works  there  are 
very  few  which  might  not  have  been  produced  at  a  single  sit 
ting.  Again,  his  work  throughout  these  sixty-five  years  was 
far  from  varied  in  character ;  like  Bryant,  he  rarely  excelled 
himself  and  rarely  fell  below.  The  limited  circumstances  of 
his  life  combined  with  lack  of  humour  to  make  his  writings 
superficially  commonplace.  What  gives  them  merit  are  oc 
casional  passages  where  simplicity  emerges  from  common 
place  into  dignity  and  sometimes  into  passion.  For  half  a 
century,  Bryant  remained  correct  and  delicately  sentimen- 


WHITTIER  361 

tal ;  for  longer  still  Whittier  remained  simple,    sincere,  and 
fervent. 

His  masterpiece,  if  the  word  be  not  excessive,  is  "  Snow- 
Bound,"  written  when  he  was  about  fifty-seven  years  old. 
At  that  time,  when  most  of  his  immediate  family  were  dead, 
he  tenderly  recalled  his  memories  of  childhood.  The  vivid 
simplicity  of  his  descriptions  every  one  must  feel  j  his  picture 
of  a  winter  evening  at  his  old  home,  for  example,  almost 
appeals  to  the  eye  :  — 

"  Shut  in  from  all  the  world  without, 
We  sat  the  clean-winged  hearth  about, 
Content  to  let  the  north-wind  roar 
In  baffled  rage  at  pane  and  door, 
While  the  red  logs  before  us  beat 
The  frost  line  back  with  tropic  heat ; 
And  ever,  when  a  louder  blast 
Shook  beam  and  rafter  as  it  passed, 
The  merrier  up  its  roaring  draught 
The  great  throat  of  the  chimney  laughed ; 
The  house-dog  on  his  paws  outspread 
Lay  to  the  fire  his  drowsy  head, 
The  cat's  dark  silhouette  on  the  wall 
A  couchant  tiger's  seemed  to  fall ; 
And,  for  the  winter  fireside  meet, 
Between  the  andirons'  straggling  feet, 
The  mug  of  cider  simmered  slow, 
The  apples  sputtered  in  a  row, 
And  close  at  hand  the  basket  stood 
With  nuts  from  brown  October's  wood." 

Nor  is  the  merit  of  "  Snow-Bound  "  merely  descriptive. 
Throughout  it  you  will  find  phrases  which,  except  for  mere 
lyric  music,  have  a  simple  felicity  almost  final.  Take  the 
couplet,  for  example,  in  which  he  speaks  of  his  aunt,  no 
longer  young,  who  never  married :  — 

"  All  unprofaned  she  held  apart 
The  virgin  fancies  of  the  heart." 

Or  take  the    lines  in    which    he    remembers  a    sister,    dead 
early  in  life  :  — 


362     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

"  And  while  in  life's  late  afternoon, 
Where  cool  and  long  the  shadows  grow, 
I  walk  to  meet  the  night  that  soon 
Shall  shape  and  shadow  overflow, 
I  cannot  feel  that  thou  art  far." 

Throughout  "  Snow-Bound "  you  may  discover  lines  as 
excellent  as  these. 

Quite  apart  from  its  artistic  merit,  u  Snow-Bound  "  is  an 
important  document  for  one  who  would  understand  the  native 
Yankee  country.  "  Flemish  pictures  of  old  days,"  Whittier 
calls  the  poem  ;  and  in  one  sense  the  term  is  happy.  He 
lovingly  sets  forth  a  very  simple  form  of  existence,  with  a 
minute  detail  something  like  that  of  the  Flemish  painters. 
Typical  Flemish  pictures,  however,  representing  a  European 
peasantry  whose  life  is  consciously  that  of  an  inferior  class, 
abound  in  touches  which  indicate  profound  coarseness  of  tem 
per.  No  Flemish  life  could  have  been  humbler,  none  more 
simple,  than  the  life  which  "  Snow-Bound  "  pictures  ;  but  this 
life  of  self-respecting  dignity  is  utterly  free  from  the  grossness 
which  usually  depraves  the  lower  ranks  of  any  old,  complex 
society.  One  begins  to  see  how  the  national  inexperience 
of  New  England  was  bound  to  teach  earnest  Yankees  those 
lessons  of  human  equality  which  Whittier  never  for  a  moment 
doubted. 

Such  vividness  as  distinguishes  the  descriptive  passages  of 
"  Snow-Bound  "  transpires  throughout  Whittier's  descriptive 
verse.  Here,  for  example,  are  some  lines  which  take  one  to 
the  very  heart  of  our  drowsy  New  England  summers  :  — 

"  Along  the  roadside,  like  the  flowers  of  gold 
The  tawny  Incas  for  their  gardens  wrought, 
Heavy  with  sunshine  droops  the  golden-rod, 
And  the  red  pennons  of  the  cardinal  flowers 
Hang  motionless  upon  their  upright  staves. 
The  sky  is  hot  and  hazy,  and  the  wind, 
Wing-weary  with  its  long  flight  from  the  south, 
Unfelt ;  yet,  closely  scanned,  yon  maple  leaf 
With  faintest  motion,  as  one  stirs  in  dreams, 


WHITTIER  363 

Confesses  it.     The  locust  by  the  wall 
Stabs  the  noon-silence  with  his  sharp  alarm. 
A  single  hay-cart  down  the  dusty  road 
Creaks  slowly,  with  its  driver  fast  asleep 
On  the  load's  top.     Against  the  neighbouring  hill, 
Huddled  along  the  stone-wall's  shady  side, 
The  sheep  show  white,  as  if  a  snow-drift  still 
Defied  the  dog-star.     Through  the  open  door 
A  drowsy  smell  of  flowers  —  gray  heliotrope, 
And  white  sweet  clover,  and  shy  mignonette  — 
Comes  faintly  in,  and  silent  chorus  lend 
To  the  prevailing  symphony  of  peace." 

And  here  are  more  lines,  which  always  come  to  mind  when 
one  looks  across  the  salt-marshes  of  Hampton :  — 

"  Just  then  the  ocean  seemed 
To  lift  a  half-faced  moon  in  sight ; 
And  shoreward  o'er  the  waters  gleamed, 
From  crest  to  crest,  a  line  of  light. 

•••••••••••« 

"  Silently  for  a  space  each  eye 
Upon  that  sudden  glory  turned ; 
Cool  from  the  land  the  breeze  blew  by, 
The  tent-ropes  flapped,  the  long  beach  churned 
Its  waves  to  foam  ;  on  either  hand 
Stretched,  far  as  sight,  the  hills  of  sand; 
With  bays  of  marsh,  and  capes  of  bush  and  tree, 
The  woods'  black  shore  line  loomed  beyond  the  meadowy  sea." 

Superficially  commonplace,  if  you  will,  passages  like  these, 
as  they  grow  familiar,  prove  more  and  more  admirable  in 
their  simple  truth.  Of  course  they  lack  lyric  beauty.  Whit- 
tier's  metrical  range  was  very  narrow,  and  his  rhymes  were 
often  abominable.  But  whenever  he  dealt  with  the  country 
he  knew  so  well,  he  had  an  instinctive  perception  of  those 
obvious  facts  which  are  really  most  characteristic,  and  within 
which  are  surely  included  its  unobtrusive  beauty  and  its  slowly 
winning  charm.  With  this  excellent  simplicity  of  perception 
he  combined  excellent  simplicity  of  heart  and  phrase. 

In  general,  of  course,  the  most  popular  literature  is  narra- 


364     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

tive.  So  Whittier's  Yankee  ballads  often  seem  his  most 
obvious  works,  —  "Skipper  Ireson's  Ride,"  for  example,  or 
that  artlessly  sentimental  "  Maud  Muller,"  where  a  New 
England  judge  is  made  to  play  the  part  of  a  knight-errant  of 
romance.  Like  his  admirable  poetry  of  Nature,  these  are 
simple  and  sincere.  In  sentiment,  too,  the  first  is  fervid. 
Both  in  conception  and  in  phrase,  however,  these,  with  all 
the  rest  we  may  let  them  stand  for,  are  so  commonplace 
that  one  finds  critical  admiration  out  of  the  question.  They 
belong  to  that  school  of  verse  which  perennially  flourishes 
and  withers  in  the  poetical  columns  of  country  newspapers. 

Whittier's  true  claim  to  remembrance  will  rest  on  no  such 
popularity  as  this,  even  though  that  popularity  chance  to  be 
more  than  momentary.  In  the  first  place,  his  simple  pictures 
of  New  England  Nature  are  often  excellent.  In  the  second 
place,  the  fervour  of  his  lifelong  faith  in  the  cause  of  human 
freedom  sometimes  breathed  undying  fire  into  the  verses  which 
he  made  concerning  the  conflict  with  slavery.  Throughout 
them  his  faults  appear.  In  1836  Congress  passed  a  bill 
excluding  from  the  United  States  Post  Office  all  Abolitionist 
publications;  against  this  bill  Whittier  wrote  a  passionate 
"  Summons  to  the  North,"  which  among  other  verses  con 
tains  the  following  :  — 

"  Torture  the  pages  of  the  Holy  Bible, 

To  sanction  crime,  and  robbery,  and  blood  ? 
And  in  oppression's  hateful  service  libel 
Both  man  and  God  ?  " 

Worse  rhymes  than  he  thus  comprised  in  four  lines,  you 
shall  search  the  language  for  in  vain  ;  but  in  that  same  poem 
are  stanzas  like  these  :  — 

"  Methinks  from  all  her  wild,  green  mountains ; 

From  valleys  where  her  slumbering  fathers  lie 
From  her  blue  rivers  and  her  welling  fountains, 
And  clear  cold  sky ; 


WHITTIER  365 

"  From  her  rough  coast  and  isles,  which  hungry  Ocean 

Gnaws  with  his  surges  ;  from  the  fisher's  skiff, 
With  white  sail  swaying  to  the  billows'  motion 
Round  rock  and  cliff ; 

"  From  the  free  fireside  of  her  unbought  farmer ; 

From  her  free  labourer  at  his  loom  and  wheel ; 
From  the  brown  smith-shop,  where,  beneath  the  hammer, 
Rings  the  red  steel ; 

"  From  each  and  all,  if  God  hath  not  forsaken 

Our  land,  and  left  us  to  an  evil  choice, 
Loud  as  the  summer  thunderbolt  shall  waken 
A  People's  voice." 

Seven  years  later,  when  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  was  en 
forced  in  Boston,  he  wrote  that  passionate  address,  "  Massa 
chusetts  to  Virginia,"  of  which  the  following  passage  is  an 
example ;  — 

"  From  Norfolk's  ancient  villages,  from  Plymouth's  rocky  bound 
To  where  Nantucket  feels  the  arms  of  ocean  close  her  round  ; 

"  From  rich  and  rural  Worcester,  where  through  the  calm  repose 
Of  cultured  vales  and  fringing  woods  the  gentle  Nashua  flows, 
To  where  Wachuset's  wintry  blasts  the  mountain  larches  stir, 
Swelled  up  to  Heaven  the  thrilling  cry  of  '  God  save  Latimer  ! ' 

"  And  sandy  Barnstable  rose  up,  wet  with  the  salt  sea  spray ; 
And  Bristol  sent  her  answering  shout  down  Narragansett  Bay  ! 
Along  the  broad  Connecticut  old  Hampden  felt  the  thrill, 
And  the  cheer  of  Hampshire's  woodmen  swept  down  from  Holyoke 
Hill. 

"  The  voice  of  Massachusetts  !     Of  her  free  sons  and  daughters, 
Deep  calling  unto  deep  aloud,  the  sound  of  many  waters  ! 
Against  the  burden  of  that  voice  what  tyrant  power  shall  stand? 
No  fetters  in  the  Bay  State  !     No  slave  upon  her  land !  " 

War,  of  course,  was  utterly  abhorrent  to  his  Quaker  prin 
ciples  ;  but  when  inevitable  war  came,  he  greeted  it  in  such 
spirit  as  this  :  — 


366     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

tl  We  see  not,  know  not ;  all  our  way 
Is  night  —  with  Thee  alone  is  day  : 
From  out  the  torrent's  troubled  drift, 
Above  the  storm  our  prayers  we  lift, 
Thy  will  be  done  ! 

"  Strike,  Thou  the  Master,  we  Thy  keys, 
The  anthem  of  the  destinies  ! 
The  minor  of  Thy  loftier  strain, 
Our  hearts  shall  breathe  the  old  refrain, 
Thy  will  be  done  !  " 

And  when  in  1865  the  amendment  to  the  Constitution, 
abolishing  slavery,  was  at  last  adopted,  he  wrote  perhaps  his 
noblest  poem,  "  Laus  Deo,"  of  which  these  three  stanzas  may 
show  the  quality  :  — 

"It  is  done! 

Clang  of  bell  and  roar  of  gun 
Send  the  tidings  up  and  down. 

How  the  belfries  rock  and  reel ! 

How  the  great  guns,  peal  on  peal, 
Fling  the  joy  from  town  to  town  ! 


"  Did  we  dare, 

In  our  agony  of  prayer, 
Ask  for  more  than  He  has  done  ? 

When  was  ever  His  right  hand 

Over  any  time  or  land 
Stretched  as  now  beneath  the  sun  ? 

"  Ring  and  swing, 
Bells  of  joy !     On  morning's  wing 

Send  the  song  of  praise  abroad ! 
With  a  sound  of  broken  chains 
Tell  the  nations  that  He  reigns 

Who  alone  is  Lord  and  God  ! " 

At  heart  Whittier  was  no  more  stirred  than  were  the  other 
antislavery  leaders,  nor  was  he  gifted  with  such  literary  power 
as  sometimes  revealed  itself  in  the  speeches  of  Parker  or  of 
Phillips,  or  as  enlivened  Mrs.  Stowe's  novel  with  its  gleams 
of  creative  genius.  But  Whittier  surpassed  all  the  rest  in  the 


WHITTIER  367 

impregnable  simplicity  of  his  inborn  temper,  derived  from  his 
Quaker  ancestry  and  nurtured  by  the  guilelessness  of  his 
personal  life. 

Another  trait  he  possessed,  and  a  trait  rare  in  tempera 
ments  eager  for  reform.  This  is  magnanimity.  It  appears 
nowhere  more  clearly  than  in  almost  the  only  departure  from 
chronological  order  in  the  final  collection  of  his  works,  which 
he  himself  arranged.  Until  1850,  Webster,  whose  devotion 
to  the  ideal  of  Union  had  compelled  him  to  oppose  every 
aggression  of  the  South,  had  been  held  by  the  antislavery  men 
an  heroic  leader.  His  Seventh  of  March  Speech,  which 
supported  a  Fugitive  Slave  Bill,  brought  down  on  him  a  storm 
of  antislavery  indignation  never  expressed  more  fervently 
than  in  a  poem  by  Whittier,  still  generally  included  in  popular 
collections  of  American  lyrics.  He  called  this  poem  "  Icha- 
bod  j  "  and  here  are  some  of  its  verses  :  — 

"So  fallen  !  so  lost !  the  light  withdrawn 

Which  once  he  wore  ! 
The  glory  from  his  grey  hairs  gone 
Forevermore  ! 


"  Let  not  the  land  once  proud  of  him 

Insult  him  now, 

Nor  brand  with  deeper  shame  the  dim, 
Dishonoured  brow. 

"  But  let  its  humbled  sons  instead, 

From  sea  to  lake, 
A  long  lament,  as  for  the  dead, 
In  sadness  make. 

"  Then  pay  the  reverence  of  old  days 

To  his  dead  fame ; 
Walk  backwards,  with  averted  gaze, 
And  hide  the  shame  !  " 

In  1850  no  man  condemned  Webster  more  fiercely  than 
Whittier.  No  more  sincere  poem  than  "  Ichabod  "  was  ever 
written.  But  two  years  after  "Ichabod"  saw  the  light, 


368     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Webster  was  dead  ;  and  it  was  nine  years  more  before  the 
Civil  War  came;  and  Whittier  survived  the  Civil  War  for 
nearly  a  generation.  In  1880,  reflecting  on  the  past,  he 
wrote  about  Webster  again.  This  poem  he  called  the  "  Lost 
Occasion,"  and  in  his  collected  works  he  put  it  directly  after 
the  "  Ichabod  "  which  he  had  so  fervently  written  thirty  years 
before.  The  "  Lost  Occasion  "  has  generally  been  neglected 
by  the  makers  of  American  anthologies,  so  "  Ichabod  "  is  tradi 
tionally  supposed  to  express  Whittier's  final  feeling  about 
Daniel  Webster.  In  this  case  tradition  is  unjust  to  both 
men.  The  single  deviation  from  chronology  in  Whittier's 
collected  works  shows  that  the  poet  desired  his  final  senti 
ment  concerning  our  greatest  statesman  to  be  phrased  in  no 
lines  of  fervid  denunciation,  but  rather  in  such  words  as 
these :  — 

"  Thou  shouldst  have  lived  to  feel  below 
Thy  feet  Disunion's  fierce  upthrow ; 
The  late-sprung  mine  that  underlaid 
Thy  sad  concessions  vainly  made. 
Thou  shouldst  have  seen  from  Sumter's  wall 
The  star  flag  of  the  Union  fall, 
And  armed  rebellion  pressing  on 
The  broken  lines  of  Washington. 

"  No  stronger  voice  than  thine  had  then 
Called  out  the  utmost  might  of  men, 
To  make  the  Union's  charter  free 
And  strengthen  law  by  liberty. 

"  Wise  men  and  strong  we  did  not  lack ; 
But  still,  with  memory  turning  back, 
In  the  dark  hours  we  thought  of  thee, 
And  thy  lone  grave  beside  the  sea. 

"  But,  where  thy  native  mountains  bare 
Their  foreheads  to  diviner  air, 
Fit  emblem  of  enduring  fame, 
One  lofty  summit  keeps  thy  name. 
For  thee  the  cosmic  forces  did 
The  rearing  of  that  pyramid, 


WHITTIER  369 

The  prescient  ages  shaping  with 

Fire,  flood,  and  frost  thy  monolith. 

Sunrise  and  sunset  lay  thereon 

With  hands  of  light  their  benison, 

The  stars  of  midnight  pause  to  set 

Their  jewels  in  its  coronet. 

And  evermore  that  mountain  mass 

Seems  climbing  from  the  shadowy  pass 

To  light,  as  if  to  manifest 

Thy  nobler  self,  thy  life  at  best ! " 

Throughout  the  records  of  antislavery  you  may  find  pas 
sionate  indignation  and  self-devoted  sincerity  ;  but  you  shall 
search  those  records  far  and  wide  before  you  shall  find  a  mate 
for  this  magnanimous  utterance.  As  time  passes,  Whittier 
seems  more  and  more  the  man  among  the  antislavery  leaders 
of  New  England  whose  spirit  came  nearest  to  greatness. 

So,  as  the  years  pass,  he  tends  to  emerge  from  the  group 
of  mere  reformers,  and  to  range  himself  too  with  the  true 
men  of  letters.  To  them  —  to  the  literature  of  renascent 
New  England,  as  distinguished  from  its  politics,  its  scholar 
ship,  its  religion,  its  philosophy,  or  its  reform  —  we  are  now 
to  turn.  And  we  have  come  to  this  literature  almost  in 
sensibly,  in  considering  the  work  of  one  who,  beginning  life  as 
a  passionate  reformer,  may  remain  for  posterity  a  living  poet. 


24 


THE    "ATLANTIC    MONTHLY" 


IN  the  autumn  of  1857  there  appeared  in  Boston  the  first 
number  of  the  periodical,  still  in  existence,  which  more  than 
anything  else  represents  the  literature  of  the  New  England 
Renaissance.  In  the  early  years  of  the  century,  the  charac 
teristic  publication  of  literary  Boston  was  the  "  North  Ameri 
can  Review."  In  the  40*5  the  "  Dial,"  limited  as  was  its 
circulation,  was  equally  characteristic  of  contemporary  lit 
erary  energy.  From  1857  until  the  renascent  literature  of 
New  England  came  to  an  end,  its  vehicle  was  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly." 

This  youngest  and  last  of  the  native  periodicals  of  Boston 
may  be  distinguished  from  its  predecessors  in  various  ways. 
Obviously,  for  one  thing,  while  the  primary  function  of  the 
u  North  American  Review "  was  scholarly,  and  that  of  the 
"Dial"  philosophic,  that  of  the  "Atlantic"  was  literary. 
In  the  second  place,  the  "  North  American  Review "  was 
started  by  young  men  who  at  the  moment  had  no  vehicle  for 
expression,  and  who  thought  they  had  a  good  deal  to  say. 
The  "Dial"  was  similarly  started  by  a  group  of  enthusiasts 
comparatively  little  known  in  letters.  The  "Atlantic,"  on 
the  other  hand,  did  little  more  than  establish  a  regular  means 
of  publication  for  men  whose  reputation  was  already  estab 
lished.  After  the  dignified  fashion  of  half  a  century  ago,  the 
articles  in  its  earlier  numbers  were  not  signed.  Whoever 

D 

takes  the  trouble  to  ascertain  their  writers,  however,  will  be 
surprised  to  find  how  few  of  them  had  not  attained  distinc 
tion  before  1857.  In  more  senses  than  one,  the  earlier 


THE  "ATLANTIC  MONTHLY"  371 

periodicals  began  youthfully ;  and  the  "  Atlantic  "  was  always 
mature. 

To  understand  the  mature  literatur*  which  at  last  thus 
concentrated,  we  have  spent  what  may  have  seemed  exces 
sive  time  on  its  environment.  Yet  without  a  constant  sense 
of  the  influences  which  were  alive  in  the  New  England  air, 
the  literature  which  finally  arose  there  can  hardly  be  under 
stood.  It  was  all  based  on  the  traditions  of  a  rigid  old 
society,  Puritan  in  origin  and  immemorially  fixed  in  structure. 
To  this,  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  came 
that  impulse  of  new  life  which  expressed  itself  in  such 
varied  ways,  —  in  the  classically  rounded  periods  of  our  most 
finished  oratory ;  in  the  scholarship  which  ripened  into  our 
lasting  works  of  history ;  in  the  hopeful  dreams  of  the  Uni 
tarians,  passing  insensibly  into  the  nebulous  philosophy  of  the 
Transcendentalists,  and  finally  into  first  fantastic  and  soon 
militant  reform.  Each  of  these  phases  of  our  Renaissance 
gave  us  names  which  are  still  worth  memory :  Webster, 
Everett,  and  Choate ;  Ticknor,  Prescott,  Motley,  and  Park- 
man ;  Emerson,  Margaret  Fuller,  and  Thoreau;  Theodore 
Parker,  Phillips,  and  Sumner;  Mrs.  Stowe,  and  Whittier. 
Thus  grouped  together,  we  can  see  these  people  to  have  been 
so  dissimilar,  and  sometimes  so  antagonistic,  that  human  friend 
ship  between  them,  or  even  mutual  understanding,  was  hardly 
possible.  At  the  same  time,  as  we  look  at  them  together,  we 
must  see  that  all  possessed  in  common  a  trait  which  marks 
them  as  of  the  old  New  England  race.  Each  and  all  were 
strenuously  earnest ;  and  though  the  earnestness  of  some  con 
fined  itself  to  matters  of  this  world,  —  to  history,  to  politics, 
or  to  reform,  —  while  that  of  others  was  centred,  like  that 
of  the  Puritan  fathers,  more  on  the  unseen  eternities,  not  one 
of  them  was  ever  free  from  a  constant  ideal  of  principle,  of 
duty.  Nor  was  the  idealism  of  these  men  always  confined  to 
matters  of  conduct.  In  Emerson,  more  certainly  than  in  the 
fathers  themselves,  one  feels  the  ceaseless  effort  of  New 


372     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

England  to  grasp,  to  understand,  to  formulate  the  realities 
which  must  forever  lie  beyond  human  ken.  The  New  Eng- 
landers  of  our  Renaissance  were  no  longer  Puritans ;  they 
had  discarded  the  grim  dogmas  of  Calvinism ;  but  so  far  as 
Puritanism  was  a  lifelong  effort  to  recognise  and  to  follow 
ideals  which  can  never  be  apprehended  by  unaided  human 
senses,  they  were  still  Puritan  at  heart. 

Herein  lies  the  trait  which  most  clearly  distinguishes  New 
England  from  those  neighbouring  Middle  States  where  the 
letters  of  America  sprang  into  life  a  few  years  earlier.  In 
both,  the  impulse  to  expression  which  appeared  so  early  in 
the  nineteenth  century  may  be  held  only  an  American  phase 
of  the  world-wide  tendency  to  revolution  which  during  the 
century  effected  so  many  changes  in  Europe.  To  both,  too, 
this  impulse  came  in  a  guise  which  may  make  the  term  "  Re 
naissance  "  seem  applicable  equally  to  both.  In  New  York, 
however,  the  impulse  tended  immediately  to  the  production  of 
an  imitative  literature  which  had  done  its  best  work  by 
1832;  in  New  England,  meanwhile,  that  same  year,  which  is 
so  convenient  a  landmark,  was  marked  chiefly  by  Emerson's 
sermon  on  the  Lord's  Supper.  Oratory  was  at  its  best ; 
scholarship  was  swiftly  developing  ;  Unitarianism  had  com 
pletely  dominated  Boston  ;  Transcendentalism  was  just  begin 
ning  its  course  of  wild,  disintegrant  luxuriance ;  and  not  only 
destructive  reform  but  pure  letters  too  were  still  to  come.  The 
humours  of  any  period  often  show  its  characteristics  most 
plainly.  There  is  an  aspect  in  which  the  name  of  Scriptures, 
by  which  Bronson  Alcott  chose  to  call  his  philosophic  diaries, 
seems  comically  applicable  to  all  the  earlier  writing  of  the  New 
England  where  he  calmly  displayed  his  innocence  of  common- 
sense.  When  a  new  impulse  came  to  the  children  of  the  Puri 
tans,  their  first  instinctive  effort  was  to  formulate  a  new  law  and 
gospel. 

This  new  law  and  gospel  was  concerned  with  a  spirit 
hitherto  strange  to  the  region,  the  spirit  to  which  the  cant  of 


THE  "ATLANTIC  MONTHLY"  373 

later  days  has  given  the  name  of  Culture.  Ancestral  New 
England  knew  the  Bible,  the  Common  Law,  the  formal 
traditions  of  the  older  classical  education,  and  little  else. 
With  the  Renaissance  there  came  at  last  to  New  England 
an  eager  knowledge  of  all  the  other  phases  of  human 
thought  and  expression  which  enrich  the  records  of  modern 
civilisation.  The  temper  in  which  this  new  learning  was 
received  there  is  nowhere  better  typified  than  by  the  title  and 
the  contents  of  a  book  which  preserves  some  lectures  given  by 
Emerson  in  1844,  —  the  year  when  the  "Dial"  faded  out  of 
existence.  "Representative  Men"  is  the  name  of  it, — a 
name  which  suggests  those  countless  volumes  of  contemporary 
biography  wherein  successful  men  of  business  are  frequently 
invited  to  insert  their  lives  and  portraits  at  an  expense  so 
slight  as  to  be  within  reach  of  any  respectable  citizen 
of  every  considerable  village.  Emerson's  "  Representative 
Men  "  were  of  different  stripe  from  these.  The  personages 
whom  he  chose  to  group  under  his  every -day  title  were  Plato, 
the  Philosopher ;  Swedenborg,  the  Mystic  ;  Montaigne,  the 
Sceptic ;  Shakspere,  the  Poet ;  Napoleon,  the  Man  of  the 
World  ;  and  Goethe,  the  Writer.  To  Emerson,  in  short,  and 
to  the  New  England  of  which  in  his  peculiar  phrase  he  was  a 
representative  man,  the  whole  range  of  literature  was  suddenly 
opened.  Two  centuries  of  national  inexperience  had  deprived 
the  region  not  only  of  critical  power,  but  for  the  moment  of 
all  suspicion  that  this  was  lacking.  With  the  fresh  enthusiasm 
of  discovery  New  England  faced  this  newly  found  company 
of  the  good  and  great,  feeling  chiefly  that  even  like  ourselves 
these  were  men.  To  any  who  hold  fervent  faith  in  the 
excellence  of  human  nature  the  fact  of  common  humanity 
must  seem  the  chief  of  all.  Plato  was  a  man,  and  Swedenborg, 
and  the  rest.  We  are  men,  too.  Let  us  meet  our  elder 
brethren,  face  to  face,  asking  what  they  may  have  to  tell  us. 
We  shall  be  glad  to  hear,  and  doubtless  they  will  gladly 
be  heard.  The  mood  is  like  that  of  good  old  Father  Taylor, 


374    THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

the  sailor-preacher  of  Boston  Methodism.  By  some  odd 
chance,  he  once  got  into  the  presence  of  Gregory  XVI., 
and  he  is  said,  in  describing  the  incident,  to  have  ended,  in 
all  gravity,  with  the  words, "  So  the  Pope  blessed  me,  and  I 
blessed  the  Pope." 

Fifty  years  and  more  have  done  their  work  since  those 
aspiring  old  times.  From  contemporary  New  England  the 
fact  of  greatness  obscures  the  humanity  of  all  classic  letters, 
ancient  or  modern.  In  the  full  flush  of  our  Renaissance,  on 
the  other  hand,  there  was  left  in  us  something  like  the  artless 
unconsciousness  of  healthy  children.  No  wonder,  then,  we 
were  a  little  slow  to  make  pure  letters  for  ourselves.  It  is 
not  that  we  lacked  them,  of  course.  The  names  we  have 
already  considered  belong  not  only  to  the  history  of  those 
various  phases  of  Renaissance  with  which  we  have  chosen  to 
consider  them,  but  to  that  of  letters,  too.  Hardly  any  of  these 
men,  however,  was  primarily  a  maker  of  literature.  All  de 
serve  distinction  in  literary  history  chiefly  because  they  did 
with  loving  care  the  writing  which  they  held  their  earthly 
business. 

Naturally,  then,  the  literature  of  New  England  was  compar 
atively  slow  in  reaching  maturity.  It  is  more  than  an  accident 
of  date  that  the  years  when  the  "  Knickerbocker  Maga 
zine  "  began  to  fade  out  of  New  York,  and  with  it  the  whole 
elder  school  of  which  it  marked  the  blameless  decline,  saw  in 
Boston  the  establishment  of  the  first  periodical  whose  function 
Was  chiefly  literary.  The  innocent  old  literature  of  pleasure 
which  began  with  the  novels  of  Brockden  Brown  was  truly 
exhausted.  The  literature  of  New  England,  meanwhile, 
which  had  been  ripening  as  its  elder  was  falling  into  decay, 
had  only  just  reached  the  point  where  it  demanded  a  reg 
ular  vehicle  of  expression.  This  vehicle  came,  to  be  sure,  only 
when  the  strength  of  the  New  England  Renaissance  was 
beginning  to  fail.  None  of  the  New  England  men  of  letters, 
however,  had  begun  to  feel  the  infirmities  of  age,  when  one 


THE  "ATLANTIC  MONTHLY"  375 

and  all  found  a  common  meeting-ground  in  the  pages  of  the 
"  Atlantic  Monthly." 

The  "  Atlantic  "  is  thus  associated  with  almost  every  name 
eminent  in  our  later  New  England  letters;  but  most  closely 
of  all,  perhaps,  with  that  of  a  man  whose  presence  in  Boston, 
from  1834  until  his  death  in  1881,  had  incalculable  influence 
on  local  literary  life.  This  was  James  Thomas  Fields, 
for  many  years  publisher  of  the  "Atlantic,"  and  from  1862 
to  1870  its  editor. 

Fields  was  a  self-made  man,  born  in  1816  at  Ports 
mouth,  New  Hampshire,  and  educated  only  in  the  common 
schools  there.  When  a  mere  boy  he  began  active  life  as 
a  clerk  in  a  Boston  book  store.  Like  many  intelligent 
Yankees  he  had  business  ability ;  at  twenty-two  he  was 
already  partner  in  a  publishing  house ;  and  he  remained  an 
active  publisher  in  Boston  for  thirty-five  years,  retiring  with 
a  comfortable  fortune.  What  makes  Fields  memorable, 
however,  are  not  his  practical  gifts,  nor  yet  the  fact  that  in  a 
modest  way  he  was  himself  a  man  of  letters.  His  most 
familiar  poem  implies  his  limits.  This  "  Ballad  of  the  Tem 
pest  "  tells  the  story  of  a  storm  at  sea.  Things  go  very 
wrong  until 

" '  We  are  lost,'  the  captain  shouted, 

As  he  staggered  down  the  stairs. 
But  his  little  daughter  whispered, 

As  she  took  his  icy  hand, 
*  Is  n't  God  upon  the  ocean, 

Just  the  same  as  on  the  land  ?  '  " 

And  the  next  morning  they  come  safe  to  harbour.  All  of 
which,  though  very  pretty  and  moral,  expresses  a  course  of 
marine  conduct  quite  inconceivable  when  you  reflect  that 
the  author  was  brought  up  in  a  still  busy  Yankee  seaport. 
So  far  as  Fields  was  a  poet  or  merely  a  man  of  business, 
he  might  be  dismissed  as  unimportant. 

And  yet  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  one  had  greater  or  better 


376     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

influence  on  the  literature  of  New  England.  From  boyhood 
Fields  devotedly  loved  letters ;  and  his  literary  enthusiasm 
combined  with  great  personal  amiability  and  with  sympathetic 
kindness  of  nature  to  make  him,  before  he  reached  middle  life, 
the  intimate  personal  friend  of  every  man  of  letters  in  New 
England,  and  of  many  such  men  in  the  old  world  too.  The 
result  of  this  is  evident  to  any  one  who  will  glance  at  the 
trade-lists  of  the  firm  of  which  he  was  for  years  the  head. 
Here,  to  go  no  further,  you  will  find  all  the  works  of  Emerson, 
Thoreau,  Whittier,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes,  and  Haw 
thorne.  There  are  plenty  of  other  honourable  American  names 
there,  too,  as  well  as  those  of  eminent  foreign  writers.  For 
one  thing,  Fields  was  the  first  to  collect  and  to  set  forth  in 
systematic  form  the  work  of  Thomas  De  Quincey,  until  Fieids's 
time,  lost  in  numberless  periodicals.  As  a  sincere  lover  of 
letters,  then,  and  a  publisher  of  unusual  tact  and  skill,  Fields, 
during  the  years  between  1840  and  1870,  afforded  to  the 
literary  men  of  New  England  a  rare  opportunity.  One  and 
all  had  constantly  near  by  a  skilful  publisher,  who  was  at  the 
same  time  a  wise  counsellor,  a  warm  personal  friend,  and  an 
ardent  admirer.  The  stimulus  to  literary  production  afforded 
by  such  a  patron  of  letters  can  hardly  be  estimated. 

Though  Fields  was  not  the  originator  of  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly,"  he  was  for  years  its  publisher  and  for  some  time 
its  editor.  He  was  not  the  originator,  either,  of  a  little  society 
of  which  he  was  an  early  and  enthusiastic  member.  This 
was  the  Saturday  Club,  which  grew  spontaneously  into  exist 
ence  sometime  about  1857,  assembling  at  occasional  dinners 
the  principal  literary  personages  of  the  day.  Emerson  was  a 
member ;  so  were  Motley,  Holmes,  Longfellow,  Agassiz,  and 
many  more.  The  club,  which  survives,  is  too  private  for 
detailed  mention.  As  New  England  literature  has  faded,  too, 
the  club,  though  still  distinguished  in  membership,  is  no  longer 
a  centre  of  literary  creation.  Very  lately,  however,  a  man 
familiar  with  the  social  history  of  Boston  declared  that  in  their 


THE  "ATLANTIC  MONTHLY"  377 

own  day  the  standard  writers  of  New  England  were  more  con 
cerned  as  to  what  the  Saturday  Club  might  think  of  their 
productions  than  they  ever  deigned  to  be  about  the  public. 

Such  facts,  of  course,  are  indefinite.  How  far  the  opinion 
of  the  Saturday  Club  really  affected  the  literature  of  its  palm 
iest  days  may  still  be  debatable;  and  so,  indeed,  may  the 
question  of  how  far  the  personality  of  Fields,  at  once  an  en 
thusiastic  member  of  the  club,  the  most  successful  of  New 
England  publishers,  and  the  editor  of  the  u  Atlantic/'  was 
vitally  stimulating.  Surely,  though,  as  one  begins  to  see  in 
perspective  a  period  which  is  passing  into  history,  the  im 
portance  of  these  influences  seems  rather  to  grow  than  to 
lessen.  At  least,  it  was  when  these  were  at  their  strongest 
that  much  of  the  best  New  England  literature  was  made  and 
came  to  light.  Some  of  its  makers  we  have  already  consid 
ered.  Four,  however,  more  unreservedly  devoted  to  letters 
than  the  rest,  remain  for  us.  These  are  Longfellow,  Lowell, 
Holmes,  and  Hawthorne. 


XI 

HENRY    WADSWORTH    LONGFELLOW 

AMONG  the  men  of  letters  who  in  mature  life  gathered  about 
the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  the  most  popular  was  Henry  Wads- 
worth  Longfellow.  He  was  born  in  1807  at  Portland,  Maine, 
where  his  father  was  a  lawyer.  At  the  beginning  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  the  profession  of  the  bar  involved  in  New 
England  a  personal  eminence  similar  to  that  which  in  colonial 
times  had  been  held  there  by  the  clergy.  Though  a  lawyer 
might  not  be  rich,  he  was  locally  conspicuous,  much  as  rich 
men  have  been  since  the  Civil  War;  and,  furthermore,  his 
professional  position  usually  implied  what  mere  wealth  has 
never  yet  implied  among  native  Yankees,  —  that  in  private 
life  he  enjoyed  a  certain  social  distinction.  A  little  earlier 
than  Longfellow's  time,  the  son  of  a  lawyer  would  have  found 
himself  socially  somewhat  below  the  son  of  a  divine ;  later  the 
bar  has  had  no  more  social  distinction  than  other  respectable 
callings.  As  the  son  of  a  lawyer  in  the  palmiest  days  of  the 
New  England  bar,  then,  Longfellow  was  fortunate  in  birth ; 
and  although  his  life  was  at  times  clouded  by  deep  personal 
sorrows,  its  external  circumstances  seem  throughout  as  for 
tunate  as  human  ones  can  be. 

In  boyhood  he  showed  delight  in  poetry  ;  he  early  wrote 
verses,  by  no  means  remarkable,  for  the  local  papers  of  Port 
land.  At  fifteen  he  went  to  Bowdoin  College,  at  Brunswick, 
iMaine,  where  he  took  his  degree  in  1825.  At  that  time 
there  happened  to  be  at  Bowdoin  more  students  who  were 
subsequently  distinguished  than  have  ever  been  there  since. 
Among  them  were  J.  S.  C.  Abbott,  the  historian,  Franklin 
Pierce,  who  finally  became  President  of  the  United  States,  and 


LONGFELLOW  379 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  These  college  years,  too,  were  those 
when  the  spirit  of  Renaissance  was  freshest  in  New  England 
air.  Channing's  great  sermon  on  Unitarianism  had  been 
preached  in  1819;  Emerson's  sermon  on  the  sacrament, 
which  marks  the  beginning  of  transcendental  disintegration, 
was  not  preached  until  1832.  Longfellow's  youth,  in  brief, 
came  just  when  the  religious  and  philosophic  buoyancy  of  the 
New  England  Renaissance  was  surging ;  and  this  affected  him 
all  the  more  because  in  a  region  and  at  a  college  where  old- 
fashioned  orthodoxy  still  prevailed,  he  was  from  the  beginning 
a  Unitarian.  Surrounded  by  fellow-students  of  marked  ability, 
he  found  himself  in  a  somewhat  militant  position,  as  a  cham 
pion  amid  Calvinistic  traditions  of  a  philosophy  which  held 
human  nature  essentially  good. 

At  that  very  moment,  another  phase  of  Renaissance  was 
strongly  asserting  itself  not  far  away.  Harvard  College  had 
awakened  to  the  existence  of  a  wider  range  of  culture  than 
was  comprised  in  the  ancestral  traditions  of  the  ancient  classics. 
In  1816,  the  Smith  professorship  of  the  French  and  Spanish 
languages  was  founded  there.  In  1817,  George  Ticknor, 
fresh  from  his  then  rare  European  experience,  became  the 
first  Smith  professor.  He  filled  the  chair  until  1835;  and 
in  those  sixteen  years  he  may  be  said  to  have  established  the 
serious  study  of  modern  languages  in  America.  When  his 
teaching  began,  an  educated  American  was  expected  to  be 
familiar  with  no  later  masters  of  literature  than  the  Romans. 
It  is  to  the  influences  which  Ticknor  first  embodied  that  we 
owe  the  traditional  familiarity  of  educated  Americans  with 
such  names  as  Dante,  Cervantes,  Montaigne,  Moliere,  and 
Goethe.  Nothing  marks  the  spirit  of  our  Renaissance  more 
profoundly  than  this  epoch-making  recognition  of  the  dignity 
and  value  of  everything  which  is  truly  literature. 

When  Longfellow  graduated  from  Bowdoin  at  the  age  of 
nineteen,  Ticknor's  teaching,  then  in  its  seventh  year,  had 
made  such  general  impression  that  the  authorities  of  Bowdoin 


38o     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

began  to  desire  something  similar  there.  The  intention  of 
Longfellow's  father  had  been  that  his  son  should  study  for  the 
bar;  and  the  boy,  who  had  hardly  ever  been  out  of  Maine, 
had  no  more  obvious  qualification  for  a  professorship  of  mod 
ern  languages  than  the  fact  that  he  had  been  a  good  scholar 
in  an  old-fashioned  classical  college.  His  enthusiastic  love 
for  literature,  however,  was  soon  recognised  as  what  the  godly 
would  call  a  vocation;  in  1826  he  went  abroad  under  an 
agreement  to  prepare  himself,  by  a  three  years'  study  of  mod 
ern  languages,  for  a  Bowdoin  professorship  which  should 
resemble  Ticknor's  at  Harvard.  Like  some  old  pilgrim  to 
Christian  Rome,  he  set  forth,  wonderingly  ignorant  of  the 
truths  which  he  thus  proposed  apostolically  to  proclaim.  In 
1829  he  came  home  with  a  reading  knowledge  of  Spanish, 
Italian,  French,  and  German,  and  began  to  teach  at  Bowdoin. 
In  this  work  he  persisted  for  six  years.  In  1835,  Ticknor 
grew  tired  of  his  professorship,  and  chancing  to  possess  for 
tune  decided  to  give  up  teaching.  The  question  of  his  suc 
cessor  having  presented  itself,  Ticknor  discerned  no  man  in 
America  better  qualified  to  follow  him  than  Longfellow.  He 
recommended  Longfellow  to  the  Corporation  of  Harvard  ;  and 
Longfellow,  who  up  to  that  time  had  had  little  personal  rela 
tion  with  Cambridge,  accepted  the  Smith  professorship.  To 
prepare  himself  for  this  wider  field  of  work,  he  went  abroad 
for  a  year  more.  In  1836  he  began  his  teaching  at  Harvard, 
which  continued  for  eighteen  years. 

Longfellow's  temper,  like  Ticknor's,  proved  increasingly 
impatient  of  distracting  academic  routine.  As  must  always 
be  the  case  with  men  of  literary  ambition,  he  felt  more  and 
more  how  gravely  the  drudgery  of  teaching  must  interfere  with 
work  which  time  may  well  prove  more  lasting  and  significant. 
His  constant,  enthusiastic  wish  was  to  be  a  poet.  In  1854, 
then,  he  resigned  the  professorship  in  turn.  The  next  year 
it  was  given  to  James  Russell  Lowell,  who  held  it,  at  least 
in  title,  until  his  death  in  1891. 


LONGFELLOW  381 

Since  then  the  Smith  professorship  has  remained  vacant. 
When  it  may  again  be  filled  is  uncertain ;  but  one  thing  seems 
sure.  For  seventy-five  years  it  had  only  three  tenants, — 
George  Ticknor,  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,  and  James 
Russell  Lowell.  When  Ticknor  began  his  work  modern 
literature  was  virtually  unknown  to  America  ;  when  Lowell 
died,  modern  literature  was  as  familiar  to  this  whole  continent 
as  ever  were  the  classics.  Meanwhile  almost  all  the  literature 
which  our  continent  has  yet  produced,  and  certainly  all  the 
memorable  literature  of  New  England,  had  come  into  exist 
ence.  In  the  literary  history  of  New  England  no  three  names 
are  more  honourable  than  those  of  the  three  Smith  professors. 
Nor  is  it  invidious  to  add  that  there  is  no  living  man  of 
letters  in  America  who  could  be  invited  to  the  Smith  pro 
fessorship  with  any  hope  of  increasing  or  even  of  maintaining 
its  established  personal  distinction. 

Up  to  1854,  Longfellow,  although  already  popular  as  a 
poet,  remained  professionally  a  college  professor  of  a  new  and 
radical  subject ;  his  business  was  to  introduce  into  the  mental 
and  spiritual  life  of  Harvard  students  that  range  of  thought 
and  feeling  which  since  classical  times  has  been  gathering  its 
records  in  Europe.  Though  he  always  loved  his  subject,  he 
hated  the  use  which  his  professional  circumstances  compelled 
him  to  make  of  it.  The  instinct  which  made  him  recoil  from 
the  drudgery  of  teaching  was  sound.  He  is  remembered  as 
a  faithful  teacher;  but  anybody  can  teach  faithfully,  and  no 
faithfulness  can  make  Yankee  students  very  eager  pupils. 
Longfellow's  true  mission  was  not  to  struggle  with  unwilling 
hearers  ;  it  was  rather  to  set  forth  in  words  which  should  find 
their  way  to  the  eager  readers  of  a  continent  the  spirit  as  dis 
tinguished  from  the  letter  of  the  literatures  with  which  as  a 
professor  he  conscientiously  dealt  so  long. 

From  1854  to  tne  end>  Longfellow  lived  as  a  professional 
author  in  that  fine  old  Cambridge  house  which  before  his  time 
was  conspicuous  as  the  deserted  mansion  of  some  Tories  exiled 


382     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

by  the  Revolution,  and  which  is  now  consecrated  as  the  home 
of  the  most  widely  popular  and  beloved  American  poet.  Long 
before  he  died,  in  1882,  his  reputation  as  a  man  of  letters 
had  so  far  transcended  any  other  aspect  of  his  work  that 
people  had  almost  forgotten  how  he  had  once  been  a  college 
teacher. 

For  this  forgetfulness  there  is  plenty  of  reason.  Though 
throughout  Longfellow's  professorship  he  had  felt  its  duties 
seriously  to  prevent  literary  labour,  he  had  produced  during  his 
incumbency  much  of  his  most  familiar  verse.  His  "  Voices 
of  the  Night"  appeared  in  1839,  his  "  Evangeline  "  in  1847, 
and  his  "Golden  Legend"  in  1851.  Already,  then,  before 
he  laid  his  professorship  down,  there  were  hundreds  who  knew 
him  as  a  poet  for  every  one  who  knew  him  as  a  college 
teacher.  In  point  of  fact,  too,  the  work  which  he  did  during 
the  twenty-seven  years  of  his  purely  literary  life  hardly  ex 
tended,  although  it  certainly  maintained,  the  reputation  as  a 
poet  which  he  had  already  established  during  his  twenty-five 
years  of  teaching.  To  understand  his  real  character  as  a 
poet,  however,  we  must  constantly  keep  in  mind  that  other 
profession  of  teacher  which  he  so  faithfully  practised  for  a  full 
third  of  his  life. 

The  subjects  which  Longfellow  taught  now  have  a  familiar 
place  in  every  respectable  institution  of  the  higher  learning 
from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific.  In  his  time,  they  resembled 
some  new  discovered  continent,  where  whole  realms  of  country 
are  still  unvisited  by  man.  To  Longfellow,  accordingly,  the 
true  business  of  his  professorship  seemed  like  that  of  an  en 
thusiastic  explorer.  The  languages  which  he  learned  so  eagerly 
never  seemed  to  him  deserving  of  lifelong  study  for  themselves ; 
they  were  merely  vehicles  of  expression  which  carried  him  into 
new  and  wonderful  worlds  of  beautiful  old  humanity.  These 
vehicles  were  to  be  cared  for  so  far  as  they  are  efficient  ; 
they  were  to  be  loved  so  far  as  in  beautiful  form  they  convey 
to  us  thoughts  intrinsically  beautiful  and  noble;  but  they  were 


LONGFELLOW  383 

at  best  vehicles  whose  use  was  to  lead  him  into  inexhaustible 
regions  of  humanity,  unknown  except  by  vague  tradition  to 
his  countrymen  who  had  gone  before  him. 

In  his  love  for  literature  thus  considered,  Longfellow  never 
wavered.  What  vexed  him  throughout  the  years  of  his  teach 
ing  was  not  the  matter  with  which  he  dealt ;  it  was  rather 
that  he  shrank  from  imparting  literature  to  unwilling  pupils, 
that  he  longed  to  saturate  himself  with  it  and  to  express 
unfettered  the  sentiments  which  it  unfailingly  stirred  within 
him.  These  sentiments,  which  he  uttered  in  a  manner  so 
welcome  to  all  America,  seemed  to  him  as  spontaneous 
as  ever  inspiration  seemed  to  poets  who  have  heard  the  true 
whisper  of  the  Muse.  Yet  one  who  now  studies  his  work  can 
hardly  help  feeling  that  even  though  he  never  suspected  the 
fact,  his  temper  as  a  man  of  letters  was  almost  as  academic  as 
was  the  profession  to  which  he  reluctantly  devoted  year  after 
year  of  his  maturity. 

The  task  of  universities  is  to  deal  not  so  much  with  actual 
life  as  with  the  records  of  it.  From  eldest  time  human 
beings  have  left  traces  of  what  their  earthly  experience  has 
meant.  In  efforts  to  preserve,  to  understand,  to  elucidate 
these  traces  of  the  vanished  past  and  vanished  men,  scholars 
exhaust  energy  enough  for  any  human  lifetimes.  They  are 
bound,  then,  to  drift  away  from  actuality.  Their  lives  are 
employed,  and  importantly,  in  gleaning  from  books  material 
which  shall  engender  the  scholarship  and  the  books  of  the 
future.  Now,  Longfellow's  temper,  even  as  a  teacher,  was 
that  of  a  man  of  letters ;  he  felt  constantly  stirred  to  what  he 
believed  original  expression,  and  he  was  never  content  unless 
he  was  phrasing  as  well  as  he  could  the  emotions  which  arose 
within  him  amid  all  the  drudgery  of  work.  But  if  in  this 
aspect  Longfellow  was  a  genuine  man  of  letters,  he  was  all 
the  while  an  academic  scholar  ;  for  the  influence  which  stirred 
him  most  was  not  what  he  experienced,  but  rather  what  he 
read.  From  beginning  to  end  he  was  inspired  chiefly,  if  not 


384     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

wholly,  by  noble  and  beautiful  records  of  facts  long  since  dead 
and  gone. 

Though  this  limitation  marks  Longfellow  apart  from  those 
great  poets  who  have  immortally  expressed  the  meaning  of 
actual  life,  it  had  at  once  the  grace  of  sincerity,  and  the  added 
grace  of  that  natural  gift  which  was  perhaps  Longfellow's 
most  salient.  His  taste  was  unerring.  Wherever  he  met  the 
beauties  of  literature  he  delighted  in  them  with  inexhaustible 
zest ;  and  in  his  instinctive  feelings  about  literature  there  was 
something  very  like  the  guileless  confidence  in  human  nature 
which  inspired  the  Unitarians  and  the  Transcendentalists. 
For  a  little  while  the  national  inexperience  of  New  England 
had  so  freed  it  from  the  vileness  of  dense  humanity  that  in 
religion,  in  philosophy,  in  morals,  the  most  earnest  minds 
could  honestly  believe  uppermost  in  mankind  those  traits 
which  are  best.  In  the  literatures  which  Longfellow  loved 
we  can  to-day  see  endless  depths  of  baseness  ;  and  to-day  we 
know  these  literatures  so  well  that  we  can  hardly  neglect  such 
shadows.  To  Longfellow,  on  the  other  hand,  these  whole 
regions  of  aesthetic  delight  were  so  fresh  that  he  could  delight 
in  their  beauties,  which  he  perceived  with  such  instant  tact, 
and  could  honestly  be  blind  to  everything  not  beautiful  or 
noble.  His  mood  resembled  that  of  some  simple  American 
boy  who  with  all  the  innocence  of  our  native  youth  is  sud 
denly  brought  face  to  face  with  the  splendours  of  European 
civilisation.  Such  a  boy  overwhelmingly  feels  the  beauties 
which  survive  from  an  illimitable  past.  The  evil  and  the 
turmoil  of  the  days  which  produced  the  sculpture  of  Greece, 
or  the  painting  of  Italy,  or  the  architecture  of  Gothic  Europe, 
are  dead  and  gone.  To  discover  them  nowadays  demands 
the  scrutiny  of  a  scientific  scholarship  for  which  an  untutored 
American  boy  is  still  immature.  Intoxicated  with  delight  in 
the  beauty  which  old  humanity  has  wrought,  he  is  not  even 
aware  that  about  him  grovels  a  social  corruption  baser  than 
his  native  inexperience  has  ever  dreamed  on.  From  dreams 


LONGFELLOW  385 

like  these  there  must  generally  be  awakening,  nor  can  there 
be  much  more  tragic  awakening  than  that  which  comes  to 
such  a  boy  when  he  begins  to  perceive  all  the  evil  so  inextri 
cably  intermingled  with  the  beauty  which  once  he  thought  so 
pure.  But  Longfellow  had  the  rare  happiness  to  be  a  lifelong 
dreamer.  He  lived  at  a  moment  of  such  national  youth  that 
throughout  his  seventy-five  years  he  never  knew  the  maturity 
which  disenchants  our  later  time. 

The  impression  which  he  made  on  his  first  readers  has 
never  been  better  phrased  than  by  Mr.  Stedman  :  — 

"  A  new  generation  may  be  at  a  loss  to  conceive  the  effect  of  Long 
fellow's  work  when  it  first  began  to  appear.  I  may  convey  something 
of  this  by  what  is  at  once  a  memory  and  an  illustration.  Take  the 
case  of  a  child  whose  Sunday  outlook  was  restricted,  in  a  decaying 
Puritan  village,  to  a  wooden  meeting-house  of  the  old  Congregational 
type.  The  interior  —  plain,  colourless,  rigid  with  dull  white  pews  and 
dismal  galleries  —  increased  the  spiritual  starvation  of  a  young  nature 
unconsciously  longing  for  colour  and  variety.  Many  a  child  like  this 
one,  on  a  first  holiday  visit  to  the  town,  seeing  the  vine-grown  walls, 
the  roofs  and  arches,  of  a  graceful  Gothic  church,  has  felt  a  sense  of 
something  rich  and  strange;  and  many,  now  no  longer  children,  can 
remember  that  the  impression  upon  entrance  was  such  as  the  stateli 
est  cathedral  could  not  renew.  The  columns  and  tinted  walls,  the 
ceiling  of  oak  and  blue,  the  windows  of  gules  and  azure  and  gold,  — 
the  service,  moreover,  with  its  chant  and  organ-roll, —  all  this  enrap 
tured  and  possessed  them.  To  the  one  relief  hitherto  afforded  them, 
that  of  nature's  picturesqueness,  —  which  even  Calvinism  endured 
without  compunction,  —  was  added  a  new  joy,  a  glimpse  of  the  beauty 
and  sanctity  of  human  art.  A  similar  delight  awaited  the  first  readers 
of  Longfellow's  prose  and  verse.  Here  was  a  painter  and  a  romancer 
indeed,  who  had  journeyed  far  and  returned  with  gifts  for  all  at  home, 
and  who  promised  often  and  again  to 

*  sing  a  more  wonderful  song 
Or  tell  a  more  marvellous  tale.'  " 

The  hold  which  Longfellow  thus  took  on  enthusiastic 
American  youth  he  soon  took  on  the  whole  reading  public 
of  our  country.  His  popularity  is  evident  in  our  general 
familiarity  with  the  creatures  of  his  fancy.  The  village 
blacksmith,  the  youth  who  bears  'mid  snow  and  ice  a  banner 

25 


386     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

with  the  strange  device  Excelsior,  the  skipper  wrecked  on  the 
reef  of  Norman's  Woe,  Evangeline,  Hiawatha,  Miles  Stand- 
ish,  John  Alden,  Priscilla  the  Puritan  maiden,  and  even  Paul 
Revere,  —  figures  and  names  which  but  for  Longfellow  would 
hardly  have  been  known,  —  he  has  made  us  apt  to  group  with 
Bible  patriarchs  or  the  world-old  heroes  of  antiquity.  Such 
popularity  almost  implies  a  weakness.  Profundity  of  substance, 
or  excellence  of  form,  rarely  touches  the  masses;  and  Long 
fellow's  very  popularity  resulted  long  ago  in  a  reaction  against 
him  among  the  fastidious.  This  never  affected  the  serenity 
of  his  temper;  and,  indeed,  amid  the  sincere  adulation  which 
was  constantly  brought  to  his  feet  during  his  last  years 
at  Cambridge,  he  may  very  possibly  not  have  remarked  that 
his  admirers  were  apt  to  be  less  and  less  educated.  Even  in 
early  days,  however,  when  his  popularity  had  only  just  trans 
pired,  the  admiration  which  his  work  excited  was  clouded  by 
occasional  dissent.  Margaret  Fuller,  for  example,  conscien 
tiously  devoted  to  the  extravagance  of  Transcendental  phil 
osophy,  found  Longfellow  shallow,  and  said  so.  Poe,  as  far 
from  academic  a  personage  as  if  he  had  been  incontestably 
a  great  one,  utterly  misunderstood  the  academic  character  of 
Longfellow's  mind,  and  accused  him  of  plagiarism.  And 
there  was  more  such  criticism. 

For  this  there  was  ground.  Longfellow  never  wrote  any 
thing  more  deeply  sincere  than  the  u  Psalm  of  Life,"  which 
remains  perhaps  the  most  widely  popular  of  his  lyrics.  "  I 
kept  it,"  he  said,  "  some  time  in  manuscript,  unwilling  to  show 
it  to  any  one,  it  being  a  voice  from  my  inmost  heart,  at  a 
time  when  I  was  rallying  from  depression."  From  the  day, 
more  than  fifty  years  ago,  when  it  first  saw  light  in  the 
"  Knickerbocker  Magazine,"  it  has  spoken,  as  it  will  speak 
for  generations  more,  to  the  hearts  of  simple-minded  men.  Its 
deepest  merit,  however,  lies  in  a  gentle  simplicity  which  un 
sympathetic  moods  must  be  at  pains  to  distinguish  from  com- 
place.  Even  of  its  most  familiar  stanza, 


LONGFELLOW  387 

"  Life  is  real !     Life  is  earnest ! 

And  the  grave  is  not  its  goal ; 

Dust  thou  art,  to  dust  returnest, 

Was  not  spoken  of  the  soul," 

one  may  well  question  whether  the  deeper  trait  is  utter  simpli 
city  or  reminiscent  triteness.  And  the  whole  poem  is  full  not 
only  of  outworn  metaphor,  but  of  superficial  literary  allusion  : 
"  Art  is  long,  and  Time  is  fleeting,"  for  example ;  the  "  foot 
prints  on  the  sands  of  time,"  which  so  queerly  mix  up  the 
beach  of  Robinson  Crusoe  with  the  unimpressionable  contents 
of  hour-glasses ;  and,  still  more,  the  closing  line, 

"  Learn  to  labour  and  to  wait," 

which  so  elusively  misses  the  solemnity  of  that  graver  line, 
*'  They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait,"  — 

the  mournful  close  of  Milton's  great  sonnet  on  his  Blindness. 
Yet  when  all  is  said,  a  sense  of  the  sweet  sincerity  which 
makes  these  commonplaces  more  dear  than  richer  wisdom 
comes  surging  back. 

Again,  Longfellow,  a  lifelong  friend  of  Charles  Sumner, 
always  sympathised  with  the  antislavery  movement ;  and  in 
1842  he  published  some  poems  in  its  behalf.  Here  are  a  few 
verses  from  one  of  them  :  — 

"  Beside  the  ungathered  rice  he  lay, 

His  sickle  in  his  hand  ; 
His  breast  was  bare,  his  matted  hair 

Was  buried  in  the  sand. 
Again,  in  the  mist  and  shadow  of  sleep, 

He  saw  his  native  land. 

"Wide  through  the  landscape  of  his  dreams 

The  lordly  Niger  flowed ; 
Beneath  the  palm-trees  on  the  plain 

Once  more  a  king  he  strode ; 

And  heard  the  tinkling  caravans 

Descend  the  mountain  road. 


388     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

"  He  saw  once  more  his  dark-eyed  queen 

Among  her  children  stand  ; 
They  clasped  his  neck,  they  kissed  his  cheeks, 

They  held  him  by  the  hand !  — 
A  tear  burst  from  the  sleeper's  lids 
And  fell  into  the  sand. 

"  The  forests,  with  their  myriad  tongues, 

Shouted  of  liberty ; 
And  the  Blast  of  the  Desert  cried  aloud, 

With  a  voice  so  wild  and  free, 
That  he  started  in  his  sleep  and  smiled 

At  their  tempestuous  glee. 

"  He  did  not  feel  the  driver's  whip, 

Nor  the  burning  heat  of  day ; 
For  death  had  illumined  the  Land  of  Sleep, 

And  his  lifeless  body  lay 
A  worn-out  fetter,  that  the  soul 

Had  broken  and  thrown  away." 

This,  of  course,  came  ten  years  before  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,"  for  which  fact  all  allowance  must  be  made  ;  but  duly 
making  it,  one  may  fairly  doubt  whether  in  all  antislavery 
literature  there  is  a  more  humorous  example  of  the  way  in 
which  philanthropic  dreamers  often  constructed  negroes  by 
the  simple  process  of  daubing  their  own  faces  with  burnt  cork. 
Compare  with  this  a  few  phrases  from  a  poem  of  Whittier's, 
written  at  about  the  same  time,  and  based  on  the  fact  that  an 
auctioneer  recommended  a  female  slave  as  a  good  Christian  :  — 

"  A  Christian  !  going,  gone  ! 
Who  bids  for  God's  own  image  ?  for  His  grace, 
Which  that  poor  victim  of  the  market-place 
Hath  in  her  suffering  won  ? 

"  My  God !  can  such  things  be  ? 
Hast  Thou  not  said  that  whatsoe'er  is  done 
Unto  Thy  weakest  and  Thy  humblest  one 
Is  even  done  to  Thee  ? 

"Oh,  from  the  fields  of  cane, 
From  the  low  rice-swamp,  from  the  trader's  cell ; 
From  the  black  slave-ship's  foul  and  loathsome  hell, 
And  coffle's  weary  chain ; 


LONGFELLOW  389 

"  Hoarse,  horrible,  and  strong, 
Rises  to  Heaven  that  agonising  cry, 
Filling  the  arches  of  the  hollow  sky, 

How  long,  O  God,  how  long  ?  " 

One  poem  is  as  honest  as  the  other ;  but  by  the  side  of 
Whittier's  passion,  one  feels  more  strongly  than  ever  the 
academic  deliberation  of  Longfellow's  emotion. 

This  trait,  evident  throughout  his  work,  is  nowhere  more 
palpable  than  in  that  familiar  "  Tale  of  a  Wayside  Inn " 
which  has  made  Paul  Revere  a  national  hero.  In  the  middle 
of  this  ballad,  Longfellow  describes  Revere,  waiting  beyond 
the  Charles  River  for  a  signal  which  was  to  be  shown  from 
the  steeple  of  a  Boston  church  :  — 

"  Meanwhile,  impatient  to  mount  and  ride, 
Booted  and  spurred,  with  a  heavy  stride 
On  the  opposite  shore  walked  Paul  Revere. 
Now  he  patted  his  horse's  side, 
Now  gazed  at  the  landscape  far  and  near, 
Then,  impetuous,  stamped  the  earth, 
And  turned  and  tightened  his  saddle  girth  ; 
But  mostly  he  watched  with  eager  search 
The  belfry  tower  of  Old  North  Church, 
As  it  rose  above  the  graves  on  the  hill, 
Lonely  and  spectral  and  sombre  and  still. 
And  lo  !  as  he  looks,  on  the  belfry's  height 
A  glimmer,  and  then  a  gleam  of  light ! 
He  springs  to  the  saddle,  the  bridle  he  turns, 
But  lingers  and  gazes,  till  full  on  his  sight 
A  second  lamp  in  the  belfry  burns  ! " 

At  a  distance  of  some  two  miles  from  the  belfry  in  ques 
tion,  Revere  first  sees,  as  would  naturally  be  the  case,  a  gleam 
of  light  from  it ;  but  immediately  afterwards  he  detects  there, 
at  this  same  distance,  a  second  lamp.  No  single  word  could 
more  unconsciously  confess  how  Longfellow  failed  to  visualise 
the  situation.  Compare  with  this  any  bit  of  excellent  descrip 
tive  verse,  such,  for  example,  as  the  approach  of  the  boats  in 
the  u  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  and  you  will  feel  the  difference  be- 


390     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

tween  creative  work  and   work  which  is  fundamentally  aca 
demic. 

But  this  is  more  than  enough  of  Longfellow's  faults  and 
limitations.  He  has  passed  from  us  too  lately  to  permit  us 
to  dwell  upon  the  singular  serenity  and  beauty  of  his  personal 
life  and  character.  No  one  can  read  its  records  or  remember 
anything  of  its  facts  without  feeling  the  rare  quality  of  a 
nature  which  throughout  a  lifetime  could  persist  unspoiled  by 
prosperity  and  unbroken  by  poignant  personal  sorrows.  To 
be  sure,  he  was  never  passionate ;  neither  in  his  life  nor  in  his 
verse  does  he  ever  seem  to  have  been  swept  away  by  feeling. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  we  have  seen,  his  taste  was  unerring, 
and  his  sentiment  gently  sympathetic.  His  real  office  was  to 
open  the  flood-gates  of  that  modern  literature  in  whose  flash 
ing  beauty  he  delighted,  and  whose  murky  depths  he  never 
quite  suspected.  And  if  the  verse  in  which  he  set  forth  his 
delight  be  hardly  of  the  kind  which  enriches  world-literature, 
its  lucidity  of  phrase  and  its  delicacy  of  rhythm  combine  to 
give  it  a  sentimental  beauty  which  must  long  endear  it  to  those 
who  love  simplicity  of  heart. 

Thereby,  after  all,  Longfellow  comes  very  near  a  world- 
old  definition  of  literary  greatness,  which  has  sometimes  been 
held  the  virtue  of  those  who  think  the  thoughts  of  the  wise 
and  who  speak  the  language  of  the  simple.  It  may  be  that 
he  knew  few  wise  thoughts  which  were  all  his  own  ;  but  he 
so  truly  loved  the  wisdom  and  the  beauty  of  those  elder  litera 
tures  which  he  was  the  first  of  Americans  fully  to  recognise, 
that  he  absorbed  in  a  way  of  his  own  the  wisdom  which  the 
good  and  the  great  of  the  past  had  gleaned  from  experience. 
At  first,  to  be  sure,  it  may  seem  that  those  considerable  parts 
of  his  work  which  deal  with  our  native  country  are  of  another 
stripe.  More  and  more,  however,  one  grows  to  feel  that, 
despite  the  subjects,  these  are  not  indigenous  in  sentiment. 
Rather,  for  the  first  time,  they  illuminate  our  American  past 
with  a  glow  of  conventional  romance.  So  by  and  by  we  find 


LONGFELLOW  391 

that  our  gently  academic  poet  has  just  been  thinking  about 
New  England  in  such  moods  as  he  loved  in  countless  old-world 
poets  who  early  and  late  recorded  the  historic  romance  of 
Europe.  Yet  Longfellow  does  not  seem  to  have  been  con 
sciously  imitative.  He  sincerely  believed  that  he  was  making 
spontaneous  American  poetry.  Whatever  his  lack  of  passion 
or  imagination,  he  was  never  false  to  himself.  Whether  he 
ever  understood  his  mission  it  is  hard  to  say ;  but  what  that 
mission  was  is  clear ;  and  so  is  the  truth  that  he  was  a  faithful 
missionary.  Never  relaxing  his  effort  to  express  in  beautiful 
language  meanings  which  he  truly  believed  beautiful,  he 
revealed  to  the  untutored  new  world  the  romantic  beauty  of 
the  old. 

Very  lately,  to  be  sure,  an  American  man  of  letters,  who  has 
the  happiness  personally  to  remember  our  elder  days,  has  said 
that  great  injustice  is  now  done  Bryant,  by  neglecting  the  in 
fluence  of  his  translations  from  the  Spanish.  To  many,  it  is 
said,  these  afforded  a  first,  fascinating  glimpse  into  the  world 
of  romance.  Historically,  then,  Bryant  may  perhaps  be  held 
to  have  pointed  out  the  way  which  Longfellow  so  faithfully 
followed.  Certainly,  however,  Bryant's  translations  are  no 
longer  generally  familiar  ;  and  Longfellow's  still  speak,  as  they 
spoke  from  the  beginning,  to  the  hearts  of  the  people.  Leader 
or  follower,  Longfellow  worthily  remains  the  most  popular 
poet  of  his  country. 

In  1880  he  wrote  for  "  Ultima  Thule,"  the  last  volume 
which  he  published,  a  final  poem,  entitled  "  The  Poet  and  his 
Songs":  — 

"  As  the  birds  come  in  Spring, 
We  know  not  from  where  ; 
As  the  stars  come  at  evening 
From  depths  of  the  air  ; 

"As  the  rain  comes  from  the  cloud 

And  the  brook  from  the  ground ; 
As  suddenly,  low  or  loud, 
Out  of  silence  a  sound  j 


392     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

"  As  the  grape  comes  to  the  vine, 

The  fruit  to  the  tree; 
As  the  wind  comes  to  the  pine, 
And  the  tide  to  the  sea ; 

"  As  come  the  white  sails  of  ships 

O'er  the  ocean's  verge ; 
As  comes  the  smile  to  the  lips, 
The  foam  to  the  surge  ; 

"  So  come  to  the  Poet  his  songs, 

All  hitherward  blown 
From  the  misty  realm,  that  belongs 
To  the  vast  unknown. 

"  His,  and  not  his,  are  the  lays 

He  sings  ;  and  their  fame 
Is  his,  and  not  his  ;  and  the  praise 
And  the  pride  of  a  name. 

"  For  voices  pursue  him  by  day 

And  haunt  him  by  night, 
And  he  listens  and  needs  must  obey, 
When  the  Angel  says :  «  Write ! '  " 

Few  men  ever  phrased  more  sweetly  what  seemed  to  them 
the  deepest  facts  of  their  artistic  lives.  In  the  gentleness  of 
this  phrasing,  as  well  as  in  the  triteness  of  this  imagery,  there 
is  something  which  tells  at  once  of  Longfellow's  limitations 
and  of  his  power.  Thinking  the  thoughts  of  the  wise,  without 
suspicion  that  the  wisdom  was  not  always  quite  his  own ; 
speaking  the  language  of  the  simple,  with  no  consciousness  of 
the  commonplaces  which  lurk  so  near  simplicity,  - —  he  be 
lieved  till  the  end  that  to  him  the  Angel  had  said  "  Write  !  " 
To  him  this  injunction  seemed  as  divine  as  any  that  Muse 
ever  spoke  to  singer  of  pristine  Greece,  or  that  the  inspiration 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  ever  breathed  into  the  heart  of  Hebrew 
prophet.  The  man  would  be  bold  who  should  reflectively  say 
to-day  that  this  pure,  true  life  and  work,  lived  and  done  by 
the  most  popular  poet  of  our  Renaissance,  is  not,  after  all,  as 
admirable  as  many  which  our  later  moods  of  criticism  have 
been  apt  to  think  greater. 


XII 

JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL 

IN  1854  Longfellow  resigned  the  Smith  professorship  at  Har 
vard  College.  The  next  year  James  Russell  Lowell  was  ap 
pointed  his  successor.  Up  to  this  time  Lowell's  career, 
though  more  limited  than  Longfellow's,  had  been  similar. 
Sprung  from  a  family  already  distinguished,  which  throughout 
the  nineteenth  century  has  displayed  high  quality  both  in  private 
and  in  civic  life,  he  was  born  at  Cambridge  in  1819,  the  son 
of  a  Unitarian  minister,  whose  church  was  in  Boston.  He 
grew  up  in  Cambridge.  In  1838  he  took  his  degree  at  Har 
vard  ;  he  studied  law ;  but  he  found  this  profession  distasteful, 
and  his  true  interest  was  in  letters.  For  fifteen  years  before 
his  appointment  to  the  Smith  professorship,  then,  he  had  been 
professionally  a  literary  man.  From  this  time  on,  for  a  full 
twenty-two  years,  his  ostensible  profession  became  what  Long 
fellow's  had  been  from  1836  to  1854,  and  Ticknor's  from 
1817  to  1835, — the  teaching  of  modern  languages  and  litera 
ture  to  Harvard  undergraduates. 

The  different  tasks  to  which  the  successive  Smith  professors 
addressed  themselves  might  once  have  seemed  a  question  of 
different  personalities ;  to-day,  however,  they  seem  rather  a 
question  of  developing  American  culture.  When  Ticknor's 
work  began,  the  names  of  Dante  and  Cervantes  were  hardly 
more  familiar  in  America  than  that  of  the  Japanese  painter 
Hokusai  is  to-day.  Ticknor's  business,  then,  was  to  intro 
duce  to  New  England  a  fresh  range  of  learning ;  and  accord 
ingly  his  most  characteristic  publication  was  the  comprehensive, 
accurately  unimaginative  u  History  of  Spanish  Literature." 
When,  after  twenty  years,  Longfellow  succeeded  him,  Amer- 


394     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

ica  knew  modern  literature  by  name,  but,  except  perhaps 
for  Bryant's  translations,  hardly  more.  Could  anything 
have  alleviated  the  drudgery  of  teaching,  then,  for  a  tem 
perament  always  yearning  to  create,  it  would  have  been 
such  a  task  as  thus  became  Longfellow's.  In  brief,  this  was 
to  make  pupils  enjoy  excursions  into  that  limitless  world  of 
modern  literature  which  for  America  was  still  newly  discov 
ered.  In  1855,  when  Lowell  came  to  his  work,  the  condi 
tions  had  altered  again.  The  main  facts  of  modern  literature 
had  become  almost  classically  familiar;  and  the  influences 
which  had  expressed  themselves  in  the  various  phases  of  New 
England  Renaissance  had  greatly  stimulated  excellent  general 
reading.  To  the  generation  with  which  Lowell  came  to  his 
maturity,  then,  the  great  modern  masters  —  Spenser  and 
Shakspere,  Dante  and  Cervantes  and  Goethe  —  were  as 
freshly  delightful  as  the  old  Greeks  had  been  to  the  culture 
of  fifteenth-century  Italy.  They  were  not  yet  stale.  But 
scholarship  cannot  stagnate ;  modern  literature  had  been  dis 
covered,  it  had  been  enthusiastically  explored,  and  now  came 
the  task  of  understanding  it.  So  as  a  college  teacher,  and  as 
a  critical  writer  too,  Lowell's  professional  task  proved 
interpretative. 

The  way  in  which  he  addressed  himself  to  this  task,  and 
the  ends  he  accomplished,  were  humorously  illustrated  not 
long  ago  when  two  Harvard  men  chanced  to  meet,  who 
had  been  pupils  of  Lowell  twenty-five  years  before.  One 
happened  to  have  in  his  hand  a  copy  of  the  "  Song  of  Ro 
land."  His  friend,  glancing  at  it,  was  reminded  of  the  old 
times  and  said  rather  enthusiastically  :  "  How  Lowell  used  to 
give  us  the  spirit  of  that !  "  —  "  Yes,"  replied  the  other,  who  is 
an  eminent  philologist,  "  and  that  was  all  he  gave  us."  In 
which  emphatic  little  adjective  is  implied  the  phase  which 
the  study  of  modern  literature  has  now  assumed.  This  range 
of  human  expression  has  been  discovered,  it  has  been  enjoyed, 
an  attempt  has  been  made  to  understand  its  spirit,  and  now,  if 


LOWELL 


395 


we  are  to  keep  pace  with  scholarship,  we  must  pitilessly  ana 
lyse  its  every  detail. 

Yet,  though  Lowell  was  not  a  severe  modern  scholar,  he  by 
no  means  neglected  severe  learning.  A  pupil  who  inquired 
about  the  minute  works  which  were  already  beginning  to  in 
terpose  themselves  between  modern  literature  and  human 
beings,  was  apt  to  find  that  Lowell  had  glanced  through  them 
and  knew  something  of  their  merits.  His  sentiments  about 
them,  however,  resembled  Emerson's  about  the  Lord's  Supper ; 
on  the  whole  they  did  not  interest  him ;  and  he  always  held  that 
until  you  were  interested  in  literature,  you  could  not  under- r 
stand  it.  The  task  he  set  himself  as  a  teacher,  then,  was  to 
excite  in  his  pupils  intelligent  interest  in  the  texts  with  which 
he  was  dealing.  This  task  he  found  as  irksome  as  Ticknor  or 
Longfellow  had  found  theirs.  In  Lowell's  teaching  days  the 
Renaissance  of  New  England  was  beginning  to  fade;  under 
graduates  were  less  and  less  apt  to  delight  in  poetry ;  and  the 
very  traits  which  prevented  Lowell  from  generally  appealing  to 
the  reading  public  prevented  him  too  from  generally  appealing 

!to  Harvard  students.  On  pupils  whom  he  really  touched,  all 
the  while,  his  influence  was  probably  as  strong  as  any  exerted 
by  a  Harvard  teacher  of  his  time.  How  conscientiously  he 
did  his  task  will  be  clear  to  any  Harvard  man  whose  memory 
runs  back  five  and  twenty  years. 

In  1875  Longfellow  and  Lowell  were  both  living  in  Cam 
bridge  ;  and  though  Longfellow  was  growing  old,  both  men 
seemed  still  in  their  prime.  To  Harvard  students,  then,  both 
names  were  generally  familiar.  Longfellow  they  knew  to  be 
the  most  popular  poet  in  America,  so  popular  indeed  that 
clever  undergraduates,  despising  Philistine  favourites,  inclined 
to  dismiss  him  as  commonplace.  Yet  even  these  complacent 
critics  could  not  be  insensible  to  the  singular  beauty  and  dignity 
of  Longfellow's  presence,  then  daily  familiar  in  Cambridge 
streets ;  and  some  of  them  were  dimly  aware  that  in  a  remote 
past  this  Olympian  old  man  of  letters  had  for  a  while  been  a 


396     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Harvard  professor.  With  Lowell  the  case  was  almost  pre 
cisely  the  reverse.  His  figure  was  less  often  visible ;  hun 
dreds  of  men  went  through  college  without  knowing  him 
by  sight,  but  almost  everybody  knew  that  he  was  regularly 
teaching  French  and  Italian  and  Spanish.  They  knew  too 
that  this  not  very  popular  college  teacher  had  literary  repu 
tation.  They  had  heard  of  the  "  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal " 
and  the  "  Biglow  Papers."  These,  however,  belonged  to  a 
past  as  remote  as  Longfellow's  professorship ;  and  what 
Lowell  had  written  since,  they  did  not  trouble  themselves  to 
inquire.  To  them  Longfellow  was  a  poet  who  had  once  been 
a  professor;  Lowell  was  a  professor  who  had  once  written 
poetry.  The  eminence  which  finally  made  him  a  national 
worthy  came  from  the  social  accomplishment  with  which 
from  1877  to  1885  he  filled  the  office  of  United  States  min 
ister,  first  to  Spain  and  later  to  England. 

This  fact  that  Lowell's  eminence  came  late  in  life  is  char 
acteristic.  Throughout  his  career,  as  man  of  letters  and  as 
teacher  alike,  he  had  been  at  once  helped  and  hindered  by 
peculiarities  of  temperament  conquerable  only  by  the  full  ex- 

1  perience  of  a  slow  maturity.  Born  and  brought  up  in  Cam 
bridge,  when  Cambridge  was  still  a  Middlesex  village,  he  was 
familiar  with  the  now  vanished  country  folk  of  old  New  Eng 
land.  From  youth  he  was  passionately  fond  of  general  read 
ing,  in  days  when  this  led  no  Yankee  away  from  sound 
:  literature.  Though  impatient  of  minute  scholarship,  too,  he 
possessed  one  of  the  most  important  traits  of  a  minute  scholar  : 
by  nature  he  was  aware  of  detail  in  every  impression, 

^  and  careful  of  it  in  every  expression.  What  truly  interested 
him,  to  be  sure,  in  life  and  in  books  alike,  were  the  traits 
which  make  books  and  life  most  broadly  human  ;  nor  did  any 
one  ever  feel  more  deeply  that,  for  all  its  paradoxical  incon 
gruities,  humanity  is  finally  a  unit.  In  his  effort  to  under 
stand  humanity,  however,  he  was  incessantly  hampered  by  his 
constitutional  sense  of  detail.  The  data  of  life,  for  one  thing, 


LOWELL 


397 


come  to  us  in  two  distinct  ways  :  the  past  is  at  rest  in  books ; 
the  present  is  throbbing  all  about  us.  ,To,understand%either.we 
must  keep  the  other  in  mind  ;  we  must  illustrate  books  by  ex 
perience,  and  to  correct  the  errors  of  experience  we  must  re 
treat  and  observe  them  from  regions  to  which  only  books  can 
take  us.  Again,  there  are  aspects  in  which  both  books  and 
life  seem  profoundly  serious  ;  yet  there  are  other  aspects  in 
which  even  the  most  serious  phases  of  both  seem  whimsically 
absurd.  And  truly  to  understand  the  complex  unity  of 
humanity  you  must  somehow  fuse  all  these,  —  life  and  books, 
sublimity  and  humour,  light  and  twilight  and  shadow. 

The  fact  that  Lowell  was  constantly  sensitive  to  incom-~3 
patible  impressions  was  not  his  only  temperamental  obstacle. 
The  well-known  circumstance  that  he  was  amateurishly  unable 
satisfactorily  to  revise  his  writing  indicates  how  completely  he 
was  possessed  by  each  of  his  various  moods,  which  often 
chased  one  another  in  bewildering  confusion,  yet  again  left 
him  for  prolonged  intervals  in  what  seemed  to  him  states  of 
hopeless  stagnation.  Throughout  all  this  uncertainty,  how 
ever,  one  can  feel  in  his  literary  temper  two  constant,  an--x 
tagonistic  phases.  His  purity  of  taste  was  quite  equal  to ' 
Longfellow's ;  particularly  as  he  grew  older,  he  eagerly  de 
lighted  in  those  phases  of  literature  which  are  excellent.  Yet 
all  the  while  he  was  incessantly  impelled  to  whimsical  extrava-^ 
gance  of  thought,  feeling,  and  utterance.  Whoever  knew 
him  as  a  teacher,  then,  must  often  have  found  him  disconcert 
ing.  At  one  moment  his  comment  on  the  text  would  be  full  of 
sympathetic  insight ;  at  the  next,  as  likely  as  not,  he  would 
make  an  atrocious  pun  ;  and  he  would  take  a  boyishly  perverse 
delight  in  watching  the  effect  on  his  pupils  of  his  spontaneous 
incongruities.  The  trait  appears  in  his  fondness  for  cramming 
his  published  essays  with  obscure  allusions  to  unheard  of 
oddities  in  the  byways  of  literature  and  history.  If  one  took 
these  seriously,  they  would  be  abominably  pedantic ;  who 
under  the  sun,  for  example,  was  Abraham  a  Sancta  Clara 


398     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

whom  Lowell  dragged  into  that  opening  passage  of  his  essay 
on  Thoreau  ?  In  fact,  however,  this  mannerism  was  only  a 
rather  juvenile  prank.  Life  puzzled  Lowell,  and  in  revenge 
Lowell  amused  himself  by  puzzling  the  people  he  talked  to  or 
wrote  for.  It  is  no  wonder  that  this  paradoxical  conflict  be 
tween  purity  of  taste  and  mischievous  extravagance  of  temper 
retarded  his  maturity  until  he  had  grown  to  the  ripeness  of 
nearly  sixty  years. 

His  impulsively  volatile  temperament,  again,  involved  some 
what  unusual  sensitiveness  to  the  influences  which  from  time 
to  time  surrounded  him.  Early  in  life  he  married  a  woman 
remarkable  alike  for  charms  and  for  gifts,  who  was  enthusias 
tically  devoted  to  the  reforms  then  in  the  air.  It  was  partly 
due  to  her  influence,  apparently,  that  Lowell  for  a  while 
proved  so  hot-headed  a  reformer.  After  her  premature  death 
this  phase  of  his  temper  became  less  evident.  It  was  revived, 
of  course,  by  the  passionate  days  of  Civil  War,  when  he 
upheld  extreme  Northern  sentiments  with  all  his  might ;  and 
the  depth  of  his  experience  finally  resulted  in  that  u  Commem 
oration  Ode  "  at  Harvard  which  chiefly  entitles  him  to  con 
sideration  as  a  serious  poet.  Yet  this  ode  itself,  though  said  to 
have  been  quickly  written  and  little  revised,  is  marked  rather 
by  exceptionally  sustained  seriousness  of  feeling  than  by  any 
thing  which  seems  simply,  sensuously  passionate.  One  of 
the  traits  for  which  you  must  search  Lowell's  volumes  long 
is  lyrical  spontaneity.  An  extravagant  contemporary  critic 
once  declared  in  conversation  that  he  had  no  more  afflatus 
than  a  tortoise.  In  this  extravagance  there  is  a  touch  of  truth, 
but  only  a  touch.  The  real  Lowell  was  a  man  of  deep,  but 
constantly  various  and  whimsically  incongruous,  emotional 
nature,  whose  impulse  to  expression  was  constantly  hampered 
by  all  manner  of  importunate  external  impressions. 

For  all  this,  the  chances  are  that,  like  Longfellow,  Lowell 
would  have  been  apt  to  consider  himself  most  seriously  as  a 
poet;  and  work  classed  among  his  poems  most  clearly  ex- 


LOWELL  399 

presses  his  individuality.  His  first  volume  of  verse  appeared 
in  1841,  three  years  after  his  graduation,  and  in  1844  and 
1848  he  published  other  such  volumes.  In  these  there  is 
nothing  particularly  characteristic.  Honest,  careful,  sincere 
enough,  the  work  seems  ;  but  except  for  the  eminence  finally 
attained  by  its  author  little  of  it  would  attract  attention  to-day. 
This  kind  of  thing  reached  its  acme  in  the  "  Vision  of  Sir 
Launfal,"  published  in  1848.  The  familiar  stanza  from  the 
prelude  to  Part  I.  is  typical  of  the  whole :  — 

"  And  what  is  so  rare  as  a  day  in  June  ? 

Then,  if  ever  come  perfect  days; 
Then  Heaven  tries  earth  if  it  be  in  tune, 

And  over  it  softly  her  warm  ear  lays ; 
Whether  we  look  or  whether  we  listen, 

We  hear  life  murmur,  or  see  it  glisten  ; 
Every  clod  feels  a  stir  of  might, 

An  instinct  within  it  that  reaches  and  towers, 
And  groping  blindly  above  it  for  light, 

Climbs  to  a  soul  in  grass  and  flowers  ; 
The  flush  of  life  may  well  be  seen 

Thrilling  back  over  hills  and  valleys  ; 
The  cowslip  startles  in  meadows  green. 

The  buttercup  catches  the  sun  in  its  chalice, 
And  there 's  never  a  leaf  or  a  blade  too  mean 

To  be  some  happy  creature's  palace  ; 
The  little  bird  sits  at  his  door  in  the  sun, 

Atilt  like  a  blossom  among  the  leaves, 
And  lets  his  illumined  being  o'errun 

With  the  deluge  of  summer  that  it  receives; 
His  mate  feels  the  eggs  beneath  her  wings. 

And  the  heart  in  her  dumb  breast  flutters  and  sings  ; 
He  sings  to  the  wide  world,  and  she  to  her  nest,  — 

In  the  nice  ear  of  Nature  which  song  is  the  best  ? " 

Here  is  a  man  who  has  read  a  great  deal  of  poetry,  and  who 
is  thus  impelled  to  write.  Somewhat  in  the  mood  of  Words 
worth  —  to  whom  three  stanzas  before  he  has  alluded  —  he 
tries  to  express  the  impression  made  upon  him  by  nature.  He 
succeeds  only  in  making  nature  seem  a  pretty  phase  of  litera- 


400     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

ture.     It  is  all  very  serious,  no  doubt,  and  sweet  in  purpose ; 
but  it  is  never  spontaneously  lyric. 

The  "Vision  of  Sir  Launfal"  was  published  in  1848.  In 
that  same  year  came  two  other  publications  which  show  a  very 
different  Lowell ;  one  is  the  "  Fable  for  Critics,"  the  other  the 
first  collection  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  which  had  begun  to 
appear  in  the  Boston  "  Courier "  two  years  earlier.  In  a 
study  like  ours,  the  u  Fable  for  Critics,"  of  which  we  have 
already  had  a  taste  or  two,  is  a  useful  document.  Ten  years 
out  of  college  and  already  a  professional  writer,  alertly  alive 
to  the  contemporary  condition  of  American  letters,  Lowell  at 
last  permitted  himself  to  write  about  them,  under  a  thin  dis 
guise  of  anonymity,  with  unrestricted  freedom.  The  result 
is  queer.  It  now  seems  wonderful  that  any  human  being 
could  ever  have  had  patience  to  read  the  poem  through. 
The  fable,  so  far  as  there  is  any,  proves  as  commonplace  as 
the  "  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal ; "  and,  besides,  it  is  bewilder- 
ingly  lost  in  such  amateurishly  extravagant  whimsicality  and 
pedantry  as  hampered  Lowell  all  his  life.  At  the  same 
time,  his  portraits  of  contemporary  American  writers,  in 
many  cases  made  long  before  their  best  work  was  done,  are 
marked  not  only  by  a  serious  critical  spirit,  but  by  acute 
Yankee  good  sense,  and  by  surprising  felicity  of  idiomatic 
phrase.  The  people  he  touches  on  are  flung  together  pell- 
mell,  amid  allusions  which  would  have  taxed  the  ingenuity  of 
Burton,  and  rhymes  which  would  have  put  Samuel  Butler  to 
the  blush,  and  puns  which  half  rekindle  the  Calvinistic  embers 
of  eternal  punishment.  Over-minuteness  never  more  tediously 
defeated  its  probable  intention  of  amusing.  Yet,  to  go  no 
further,  you  can  rarely  find  more  suggestive  criticism  any 
where  than  what  the  "  Fable  for  Critics  "  says  of  Emerson, 
Theodore  Parker,  Bryant,  Whittier,  Hawthorne,  Cooper,  Poe, 
Longfellow,  Willis,  Irving,  or  Holmes.  It  is  good  criticism, 
I  too,  sincerely  stating  the  impression  made  on  a  singularly 
'  alert  contemporary  mind  by  writers  who  have  now  acquired 


LOWELL  401 

what  they  did  not  then  surely  possess,  a  fair  prospect  of  perma 
nence  ;  and  the  very  fantastic  oddity  of  its  style,  which  makes 
prolonged  sessions  with  it  so  tiresome,  has  a  touch  not  only  of 
native  Yankee  temper  but  of  incontestable  individuality.  At 
last  permitting  himself  the  full  license  of  extravagant,  paradox 
ical  form,  Lowell  revealed  all  his  amateurish  faults ;  but  he 
revealed  too  all  those  peculiar  contradictory  qualities  which  made 
the  true  Lowell  a  dozen  men  at  once.  Nobody  else  could 
have  written  quite  this  thing,  and  it  was  worth  writing. 

More  worth  writing  still,  and  equally  characteristic,  were 
the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  which  were  collected  at  about  the  same 
time.  They  were  written  during  the  troubles  of  the  Mexican 
War.  The  slave  States  had  plunged  the  country  into  that 
armed  aggression,  which  excited  as  never  before  the  full  fer 
vour  of  the  antislavery  feeling  in  the  North.  Just  at  this  time 
the  influence  of  Lowell's  wife  made  his  antislavery  convic 
tions  strongest.  No  technical  form  could  seem  much  less 

o 

literary  than  that  in  which  he  chose  to  express  his  passionate 
sentiments.  Using  the  dialect  of  his  native  Yankee  country, 
and  emphasising  its  oddities  of  pronunciation  by  every  extrava 
gance  of  misspelling,  he  produced  a  series  of  verses  which  have 
an  external  aspect  of  ephemeral  popularity.  At  first  glance, 
the  laborious  humour  of  Parson  Wilbur's  pedantry,  and  the 
formally  interminable  phrases  in  which  he  imbeds  it,  seem 
radically  different  from  the  lines  on  which  they  comment.  As 
you  ponder  on  them,  however,  Wilbur's  elaborately  over- 
studied  prose  and  the  dialect  verse  of  Hosea  Biglow  and  Bird- 
o'-Freedom  Sawin  fall  into  the  same  category.  Both  prove  so 
deliberate,  both  so  much  matters  of  detail,  that  in  the  end  your 
impression  may  well  be,  that,  taken  all  in  all,  each  paper  is 
tediously  ingenious.  No  one  number  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers  " 
is  so  long  as  the  "  Fable  for  Critics ;  "  but  none  is  much  easier 
to  read  through. 

In  the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  at  the  same  time,  just  as  in  the 
"Fable  for  Critics,"  you  feel  constant  flashes  of  Lowell's 

26 


402     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

rarest  power ;  in  brief,  idiomatic  phrase  he  could  sum  up  mat 
ters  on  which  you  may  ponder  with  constantly  fresh  delight  and 
suggestion.  Take  a  familiar  stanza  from  the  first  paper 
of  all :  — 

"  Ez  fer  war,  I  call  it  murder,  — 

There  you  hev  it  plain  and  flat ; 
I  don't  want  to  go  no  furder 

Than  my  Testyment  fer  that ; 
God  hez  sed  so  plump  an'  fairly, 

It 's  ez  long  ez  it  is  broad, 
An'  you  've  gut  to  git  up  airly 

Ef  you  want  to  take  in  God." 

Nothing  could  seem  much  more  paradoxical.  Here  you  have 
a  scholarly  man  of  letters  deliberately  assuming  the  character 
of  an  ignorant  Yankee  countryman ;  he  first  emphasises  this 
bit  of  private  theatricals  by  the  most  obvious  comic  devices, 
and  then,  all  of  a  sudden,  with  the  passionate  earnestness  of  a 
serious  nature  stirred  to  its  depths,  he  utters  solemn  words 
concerning  God  Himself.  To  bring  a  phrase  like  those  last 
two  lines  within  the  range  of  decency,  requires  a  power  for 
which  genius  is  hardly  an  excessive  name.  Yet  Lowell,  spon 
taneously  true  to  his  paradoxical  whimsical  self,  has  made  what 
looks  like  comic  verse,  and  is  phrased  in  a  caricature  of  Yankee 
dialect,  a  memorable  statement  of  tremendous  truth. 

In  another  familiar  stanza  from  the  first  of  the  "  Biglow 
Papers,"  you  feel  the  man  of  letters  more  palpably  :  — 

"  Massachusetts,  God  forgive  her, 

She  's  akneelin'  with  the  rest, 
She,  thet  ough'  to  ha'  clung  for  ever 

In  her  grand  old  eagle-nest ; 
She,  thet  ough'  to  stand  so  fearless 

While  the  wracks  are  round  her  hurled, 
Holdin'  up  a  beacon  peerless 

To  the  oppressed  of  all  the  world  !  " 

But  you  feel,  too,  a  note  to  which  Boston  hearts  will  vibrate 
so  long  as  Boston  hearts  are  beating. 


LOWELL  403 

What  Lowell  did  in  this  first  "  Biglow  Paper,"  he  did  in  all 
such  verse  which  he  ever  wrote.  It  was  more  than  fifteen 
years  later,  in  1862,  that  he  produced  "  Mason  and  Slidell,  a 
Yankee  Idyll,"  the  monstrous  rhyme  of  which  title  exempifies 
his  least  pardonable  vagaries.  In  this,  the  Bunker  Hill  Monu 
ment  and  Concord  Bridge  have  a  long  colloquy,  at  the  close 
of  which  the  bridge  bursts  into  the  following  apostrophe :  — • 

"  I  feel  my  sperit  swellin*  with  a  cry 
Thet  seems  to  say,  *  Break  forth  an'  prophesy ! ' 

0  strange  New  World,  thet  yit  wast  never  young, 
Whose  youth  from  thee  by  gripin'  need  was  wrung, 
Brown  foundlin'  o'  the  woods,  whose  baby-bed 
Was  prowled  roun'  by  the  Injun's  cracklin'  tread, 
An'  who  grew'st  strong  thru  shifts  an'  wants  an'  pain 
Nussed  by  stern  men  with  empires  in  their  brains, 
Who  saw  in  vision  their  young  Ishmel  strain 

With  each  hard  hand  a  vassal  ocean's  mane, 

Thou,  skilled  by  Freedom  an'  by  gret  events 

To  pitch  new  States  ez  Old- World  men  pitch  tents, 

Thou,  taught  by  Fate  to  know  Jehovah's  plan 

Thet  man's  devices  can't  unmake  a  man, 

An'  whose  free  latch-string  never  was  drawed  in 

Against  the  poorest  child  of  Adam's  kin,  — 

The  grave  's  not  dug  where  traitor  hands  shall  lay 

In  fearful  haste  thy  murdered  corse  away  ! 

1  see  —  " 

And  then  he  breaks  ofF  in  nonsense,  and  winds  up  with  his 
stanzas  on  Jonathan  and  John,  wherein  you  may  find  that  ex 
traordinary  comment  on  a  weakness  of  our  English  brethren, 
of  which  the  phrasing  is  as  final  as  anything  which  Lowell's 
fantastic  pen  ever  put  on  paper :  — 

"The  South  says,  '  Poor  folks  downP  John, 
An'  '  All  men  up  ! '  say  we,  — 

*  White,  yaller,  black,  an'  brown,  John : 

Now  which  is  your  idee?' 
Ole  Uncle  S.  sez  he,  *  I  guess, 
John  preaches  wal,'  sez  he ; 

*  But,  sermon  thru,  an'  come  to  duy 

Why,  there  's  the  old  J.  B. 
A  crowdin'  you  an'  me  ! ' " 


404     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

The  man  was  really  at  his  best  when  he  let  himself  be  most 
fantastic,  and  this  because  of  that  whimsical  instability  of 
temper,  which  he  rarely  managed  quite  to  control.  Beneath 
his  wildest  vagaries  you  will  often  feel  as  deep  earnestness. 
But  he  lacked  the  power  generally  to  sustain  either  mood  quite 
long  enough  to  express  it  with  complete  effect.  The  merit 
•of  his  verses  generally  lies  in  admirable  single  phrases,  single 
lines,  or  at  most  single  stanzas.  These  flashing  felicities 
never  have  quite  the  power  which  should  fuse  a  whole  poem 
into  congruous  unity.  Like  Lowell's  personality,  his  most 
characteristic  verse  seems  a  bewildering  collection  of  disjointed 
fragments,  each  admirable  because  of  its  sincere  humanity. 

The  quality  which  so  pervades  Lowell's  poetry  equally  per 
vades  his  prose  writings.  Open  these  wherever  you  will, 
even  in  the  portions  which  deal  with  public  affairs,  and  still 
more  in  those  considerable  portions  which  criticise  literature, 
and  you  will  anywhere  find  this  same  fantastic,  boyishly  pedan 
tic  range  of  allusion.  You  will  find,  too,  all  sorts  of  unex 
pected  turns  of  phrase,  often  rushing  into  actual  puns  ;  again 
you  will  find  elaborate  rhetorical  structure,  stimulated  by  those 
great  draughts  of  old  English  prose  which  Lowell  could  quaff 
with  gusto  all  his  life.  "  Literary  "  you  feel  this  man  again 
and  again  ;  but  by  and  by  you  begin  to  feel  that,  after  all,  this 
literature  proceeds  from  an  intensely  human  being  with  a 
peculiarly  Yankee  nature.  Somewhere  about  him  there  is 
always  lurking  a  deep  seriousness  strangely  at  odds  with  his 
obvious  mannerisms,  his  occasional  errors  of  taste,  and  his 
fantastic  oddities  of  literary  behaviour. 

During  Lowell's  professorship  at  Harvard  he  was  for  some 
years  editor  of  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  and  later  had  a  share 
in  editing  the  "North  American  Review."  At  this  period 
most  of  his  prose  was  published.  His  later  writing,  produced 
after  his  diplomatic  career  began,  was  mostly  occasional ;  but 
all  along  it  tended  slowly  to  ripen.  Towards  the  end  it  gained 
at  least  in  simplicity  and  dignity ;  and  this  dignity  was  not 


LOWELL  405 

assumed,  but  developed.  With  his  slowly  attained  maturity 
and  with  that  experience  of  full  European  life  which  came 
during  his  diplomatic  experience,  —  earlier  he  had  known 
Europe  only  as  a  traveller,  —  he  gained  something  which  at 
last  gave  his  utterances,  along  with  their  old  earnestness  and 
humanity,  a  touch  of  self-respecting  humility.  Nothing  shows 
him  more  at  his  best  than  the  short  speech  on  "  Our  Litera 
ture  "  which  he  made  in  response  to  a  toast  at  a  banquet  given 
in  New  York  to  commemorate  the  one  hundredth  anniversary 
of  Washington's  inauguration.  The  simple  hopefulness  of 
the  closing  paragraph,  where  for  once  Lowell  was  not  afraid  to 
be  commonplace,  is  a  fit  and  admirable  conclusion  for  the  six 
volumes  of  his  collected  prose  :  — 

"  The  literature  of  'a  people  should  be  the  record  of  its  joys  and 
sorrows,  its  aspirations  and  its  shortcomings,  its  wisdom  and  its  folly, 
the  confidant  of  its  soul.  We  cannot  say  that  our  own  as  yet  suffices 
us,  but  I  believe  that  he  who  stands,  a  hundred  years  hence,  where  I 
am  standing  now,  conscious  that  he  speaks  to  the  most  powerful  and 
prosperous  community  ever  devised  or  developed  by  man,  will  speak 
of  our  literature  with  the  assurance  of  one  who  beholds  what  we  hope 
for  and  aspire  after,  become  a  reality  and  a  possession  for  ever." 

So  if  one  asks  where  Lowell  finally  belongs  in  the  history 
of  our  New  England  Renaissance,  the  answer  begins  to  phrase 
itself.  A  born  Yankee  and  a  natural  lover  of  letters,  he  in 
stinctively  turned  at  once  to  books  and  to  life  for  the  knowl 
edge  which  should  teach  him  what  humanity  has  meant  and 
what  it  has  striven  for.  For  all  the  oddities  of  temper  which 
kept  him  from  popularity,  the  man  was  always  true  to  his 
intensely  human  self.  In  his  nature  there  were  constant 
struggles  between  pure  taste  and  perverse  extravagance.  As 
a  man  of  letters,  then,  he  was  most  himself  when  he  per 
mitted  himself  forms  of  expression  in  which  these  struggles 
needed  no  concealment.  But  through  it  all  there  persists 
just  such  wholesome  purity  of  feeling  and  purpose  as  we  love 
to  think  characteristic  of  New  England.  Throughout,  despite 


405     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

whimsical  extravagance  of  phrase,  you  may  finally  discern  a 
nature  at  once  manly  and  human. 

"  Human,"  after  all,  is  the  word  which  most  often  recurs  as 
one  tries  to  phrase  what  Lowell  means  ;  and  "  human  "  is  an 
adjective  which  applies  equally  to  two  distinctly  different 
nouns.  In  one  sense  the  most  truly  human  being  is  he  who 
most  strives  to  understand  those  records  of  the  past  to  which  we 
give  the  name  of  the  humanities.  In  another  sense  the  most 
deeply  human  being  is  he  who  strives  most  to  understand  the 
humanity  about  him.  It  was  unceasing  effort  to  fuse  his 
understanding  of  the  humanities  with  his  understanding  of 
humanity  which  made  Lowell  so  often  seem  paradoxical.  He 
was  in  constant  doubt  as  to  which  of  these  influences  signified 
the  more ;  and  this  doubt  so  hampered  his  power  of  expres 
sion  that  the  merit  of  his  writing  lies  mostly  in  disjointed 
phrases.  At  their  best,  however,  these  phrases  are  full  of 
humanity  and  of  the  humanities  alike.  In  distinction  from 
the  other  Smith  Professors,  —  from  Ticknor,  the  scholar  of 
our  New  England  Renaissance,  and  from  Longfellow,  its  aca 
demic  poet,  —  Lowell  defines  himself  more  and  more  clearly 
as  its  earnest  humanist. 


XIII 

OLIVER    WENDELL    HOLMES 

WHEN  the  spirit  of  Renaissance  had  finally  conquered  Boston, 
and  people  who  had  clung  to  Calvinism  there  found  them 
selves  hopelessly  out  of  fashion,  the  man  whom  they  believed 
most  conspicuously  to  embody  those  pomps  and  vanities 
of  the  wicked  world  for  which  account  shall  be  demanded 
in  a  better,  is  said  to  have  been  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 
To  the  Calvinistic  mind,  indeed,  his  career  was  probably 
the  most  irritating  in  all  New  England  record.  He  was 
born,  in  1809,  at  Cambridge,  where  his  father,  a  Connec 
ticut  man  and  a  graduate  of  Yale,  had  for  some  years  been  the 
Orthodox  minister  of  the  First  Church.  Though  Harvard 
College  had  already  lapsed  into  Unitarian  heresy,  this  had  not 
yet  achieved  the  social  conquest  of  the  region.  During  Dr. 
Holmes's  boyhood  and  youth,  however,  the  struggle  grew 
fierce ;  and  at  about  the  time  of  his  graduation,  his  father, 
whose  devotion  to  the  old  creed  never  wavered,  was  formally 
deposed  from  the  pulpit  which,  after  nearly  forty  years  of 
occupancy,  he  stoutly  refused  to  open  to  Unitarian  doctrinei 
The  old  man,  than  whom  none  was  ever  more  faithfully  cour 
ageous,  was  supported  by  a  majority  of  the  communicants  of 
the  Cambridge  church.  A  majority  of  the  parish,  however, 
preferred  the  liberal  side.  This  latter  body  retained  the  old 
church  building,  the  slender  endowment  of  the  parish,  and  the 
communion-plate.  Abiel  Holmes,  with  his  saving  remnant  of 
church-members,  was  forced  to  establish  a  new  place  of  wor 
ship  ;  and  the  question  as  to  which  of  the  two  is  the  more 
direct  descendant  of  the  old  Puritan  society  from  which  both 


4o8     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

have  sprung  was  long  disputed  by  people  who  delight  in  such 
dispute.  Now  Dr.  Holmes,  in  the  matter  of  faithful  courage, 
was  his  father's  counterpart.  So,  in  comparatively  early  life, 
finding  himself  unable  to  accept  the  Calvinistic  teachings  of 
his  youth,  he  became  what  he  remained  all  his  life,  —  a  sound 
Unitarian. 

This  of  itself  might  have  been  enough  to  arouse  bitter  dis 
approval  among  the  Calvinists.  So,  almost  by  itself,  might  have 
been  the  pleasantly  prosperous  circumstances  of  his  personal 
life.  His  maternal  grandfather  was  a  judge,  and  a  Fellow  of 
Harvard  College.  Holmes,  then,  hereditarily  allied  with  both 
pulpit  and  bar,  was  doubly  what  he  used  to  call  a  New  Eng 
land  Brahmin.  Like  any  good  orthodox  boy,  he  was  sent  to 
school  at  Andover ;  and  thence,  like  any  good  Cambridge  boy, 
he  was  sent  to  Harvard  too.  There  he  took  his  degree  in 
1829,  —  a  year  remembered  in  college  tradition  as  that  which 
produced  the  most  distinguished  group  of  Bachelors  of  Arts  in 
Harvard  history.  In  obedience  to  the  traditions  of  his  mother's 
family,  he  began  the  study  of  law  ;  but  finding  this  not  con 
genial,  he  soon  turned  to  medicine.  In  pursuance  of  this  study 
he  went  abroad  for  two  or  three  years,  finally  receiving  the 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Medicine  in  1836.  After  a  year  or  two 
of  practice,  he  became  in  1839  Professor  of  Anatomy  at  Dart 
mouth  College.  A  year  later  he  returned  to  Boston,  where 
he  remained  for  the  rest  of  his  life;  and  from  1847  to  !882 
he  was  Parkman  Professor  of  Anatomy  in  the  Harvard  Medi 
cal  School. 

In  the  fact  that  a  man  of  Dr.  Holmes's  temper  and  position 
lived  for  fifty  years  in  Boston  as  a  Unitarian  physician,  there  is 
something  characteristic  of  the  city  which  he  knew  and  loved 
so  well.  Not  long  ago  there  appeared  in  some  English  review 
an  article  on  the  social  position  of  American  men  of  letters, 
wherein  the  writer  based  on  the  facts  that  Dr.  Holmes  prac 
tised  medicine  and  went  to  Unitarian  meeting  the  conclusion 

o 

that   Holmes  was  socially   insignificant.     In  England  such  an 


HOLMES  409 

inference  would  have  been  at  least  probable.  There  Uni- 
tarianism  has  often  been  held  an  almost  blasphemous  dissenting 
creed,  abhorrent  to  seriously  conservative  temper  ;  and  only 
within  the  last  few  years  has  radicalism  been  socially  tolerated 
in  the  mother  country.  In  England,  too,  until  very  lately,  the 
profession  of  medicine  has  been  held  in  comparative  social  dis- 
esteem.  In  Boston,  on  the  other  hand,  the  isolated  capital  of 
isolated  New  England,  which  has  stoutly  developed  and  main 
tained  traditions  of  its  own,  Unitarianism,  in  Dr.  Holmes's 
time,  enjoyed  a  social  security  similar  to  that  of  the  Established 
Church  across  the  water;  and  while  the  three  learned  profes 
sions  were  nominally  of  equal  dignity,  that  of  medicine  had 
probably  attracted,  between  1800  and  1850,  rather  more  men 
who  combined  breeding  with  culture  than  had  either  bar  or 
pulpit.  The  very  circumstances  which  made  English  prejudice 
assume  Holmes  to  have  been  socially  inconspicuous  and  tem 
peramentally  radical,  then,  were  those  which  would  soonest 
lead  any  one  who  knew  the  Boston  of  his  time  to  assume 
him  to  have  been  precisely  the  reverse.  , 

This  extreme  localism  of  professional  character  and  social 
position  is  characteristic  of  Holmes's  whole  life.  After  1840, 
when  he  finally  settled  in  Boston,  he  rarely  passed  a  consecu 
tive  month  outside  of  Massachusetts.  Among  Boston  lives 
the  only  other  of  eminence  which  was  so  uninterruptedly  local 
is  that  of  Cotton  Mather.  The  intolerant  Calvinistic  minister 
typifies  seventeenth-century  Boston  ;  the  Unitarian  physician 
typifies  the  Boston  of  the  century  just  past.  To  both  alike, 
Beacon  Hill  instinctively  presented  itself,  in  the  phrase  which 
Holmes  has  made  so  familiar,  as  the  Hub  of  the  Solar  System. 

Though  throughout  Holmes's  fifty  years  of  Boston  resi 
dence  he  was  a  man  of  local  eminence,  his  eminence  was  not 
quite  of  a  professional  kind.  His  practice,  in  which  he  took 
no  excessive  interest,  gradually  faded  away ;  and  long  before 
he  gave  up  his  lectures  on  Anatomy,  they  were  held  old- 
fashioned.  He  neither  neglected  nor  disliked  his  profession, 


4io     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

but  it  did  not  absorb  him ;  and  as  his  life  proceeded,  he  prob 
ably  grew  less  and  less  patient  of  that  overwhelming  mass  of 
newly  discovered  detail  which  modern  physicians  must  con 
stantly  master.  Another  reason  why  his  medical  career  be 
came  less  and  less  important  is  that  from  the  beginning  he 
had  a  keen  interest  in  literature,  and  was  widely  known  as  a 
poet.  Now,  a  man  eminent  in  a  learned  profession  may  cer 
tainly  be  eminent  in  letters  too,  but  public  opinion  hates  to 
have  him  so ;  and  any  youth  who  would  succeed  in  law  or 
medicine  can  hear  no  sounder  advice  than  that  which  Dr. 
Holmes  is  said  often  to  have  given  in  his  later  years,  — 
namely,  that  you  should  never  let  people  suppose  you  seriously 
interested  in  anything  but  your  regular  work.  In  the  very  year 
when  Holmes  had  returned  from  Europe  to  begin  practice, 
he  published  a  volume  of  poems;  and  at  least  three  subsequent 
collections  appeared  before,  with  the  beginning  of  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly,"  he  became  known  as  a  remarkable  writer  of  prose. 
His  writings,  then,  steadily  distracted  attention  from  his  profes-/ 
sion.  Nor  is  this  the  whole  story.  Holmes's  local  eminence  was1 
perhaps  chiefly  due  to  his  social  gifts.  Early  in  life  he  acquired  * 
the  reputation  of  being  the  best  talker  ever  heard  in  Boston ;  \ 
and  this  he  maintained  unbroken  to  the  very  end. 

It  has  lately  been  observed  of  Boston  society  that  the  city  is 
still  so  fixed  in  its  traditions  that  everybody  who  becomes 
widely  known  there  is  assumed  to  possess  distinct  character 
istics  which  it  becomes  his  social  business  to  maintain.  In 
the  beginning  he  chooses  his  part ;  then  the  unspoken  force 
of  local  opinion  compels  him  to  play  it  straight  through. 
Some  such  experience  probably  happened  to  Dr.  Holmes. 
Years  did  their  consequent  work.  In  his  later  life  his  con 
versation  and  his  wit  alike,  always  spontaneous  and  often  of 
a  quality  which  would  have  been  excellent  anywhere,  are  said 
sometimes  to  have  been  overwhelming.  His  talk  tended  to 
monologue,  and  his  wit  to  phrases  so  final  that  nobody  could 
think  of  anything  to  say  in  return.  There  was  humorous 


HOLMES  411 

and  characteristic  good-nature  in  that  title,  the  "  Autocrat  of 
the  Breakfast  Table,"  which  he  gave,  so  early  as  1831,  to  a 
couple  of  articles  written  for  a  now  forgotten  periodical  called 
the  "  New  England  Magazine."  Fully  twenty-five  years 
elapsed  before  he  published  anything  else  of  the  kind.  Then, 
when  in  1857  ne  began  those  papers  under  the  same  title 
which  have  become  permanent  in  our  literature,  his  opening 
phrase  is  whimsically  characteristic  :  "  I  was  going  to  say, 
when  I  was  interrupted."  Whereupon,  after  twenty-five 
years  of  interruption,  he  proceeds  with  the  autocratic  utter 
ances  now  familiar  all  over  the  world.  The  contagious 
good-humour  of  this  title,  like  the  whimsicality  of  that  little 
reference  to  the  lapse  of  a  quarter  of  a  century,  indicates  the 
quality  which  made  Holmes  popular,  despite  his  habit  of 
keeping  the  floor  and  of  saying  admirably  unanswerable  things. 
His  friends  were  heartily  attached  to  him.  They  recognised 
in  him  a  social  autocrat,  but  one  to  whom  they  were  glad  to 
listen  ;  they  fervently  believed  that  nobody  had  ever  been  like 
him,  and  that  in  all  probability  nobody  ever  would  be. 

Up  to  middle  life  Dr.  Holmes' s  literary  reputation  was  that 
of  a  poet,  whose  work  was  chiefly  social.  Almost  his  first 
publication,  to  be  sure,  u  Old  Ironsides,"  was  "  an  impromptu 
outburst  of  feeling,"  caused  by  a  notice  in  a  newspaper  that  the 
old  frigate  u  Constitution  "  was  to  be  destroyed.  His  fervent 
verses  not  only  achieved  their  purpose  of  saving  from  destruc 
tion  that  historical  craft,  whose  hulk  still  lies  at  the  Charles- 
town  Navy  Yard,  but  have  retained  popularity.  Few  lines  are 
more  familiar  to  American  school-boys  than  the  opening  one : 
u  Ay,  tear  her  tattered  ensign  down  !  "  Most  of  Holmes's 
early  verse,  however,  may  be  typified  by  the  first  stanza  of 
"  My  Aunt "  :  — 

"  My  aunt !  my  dear  unmarried  aunt ! 

Long  years  have  o'er  her  flown ; 
Yet  still  she  strains  the  aching  clasp 
That  binds  her  virgin  zone ; 


4i2     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

I  know  it  hurts  her  —  though  she  looks 

As  cheerful  as  she  can; 
Her  waist  is  ampler  than  her  life, 

For  life  is  but  a  span." 

Such  verse  as  this,  with  its  light  good-humour  and  its  reckless 
pun,  is  of  a  sort  which  for  want  of  a  native  English  term  we 
call  vers  de  soci'ete. 

Of  social  verse  in  every  sense  of  the  word  Holmes  early 
showed  himself  a  master ;  and  to  the  end  his  mastery  never 
relaxed.  At  least  during  the  nineteenth  century  it  has  been  cus 
tomary  in  the  region  of  Boston  to  celebrate  anniversaries  and 
other  formal  occasions  by  regular  orations  and  poems.  A 
perpetual  type  of  such  functions  may  be  found  in  the  annual 
oration  and  poem  delivered  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  society 
of  Harvard  College.  At  formal  dinners,  too,  it  has  been  cus 
tomary  to  vary  the  monotony  of  speeches  by  occasional  essays 
in  verse;  and  this  custom  has  probably  produced  an  amount 
of  ephemeral  metrical  composition,  sometimes  avowed  dog 
gerel,  sometimes  aspiring  to  be  poetry,  more  than  equal  in 
bulk  to  the  entire  lyric  and  dramatic  poetry  of  Elizabethan 
England.  Among  the  writers  of  this  occasional  verse  socially 
demanded  by  his  time,  Holmes  early  acquired  distinction ; 
and  as  the  work  amid  which  it  was  produced  has  justly  been 
forgotten,  Holmes's  occasional  verse,  which  in  both  senses  of 
the  term  forms  the  better  part  of  his  poetic  utterance,  has 
already  acquired  some  such  apparent  isolation  as  one  feels 
in  the  transcendental  aphorisms  of  Emerson.  The  time  is  not 
far  off,  if  indeed  it  be  not  on  us  already,  when  people  will 
think  of  Holmes  not  as  a  man  who  did  the  common  work  of 
a  school  decidedly  better  than  the  rest,  but  rather  as  the  only 
man  who  did  it  at  all. 

He  wrote  verses  for  almost  every  kind  of  occasion  which 
demanded  them.  The  occasions  most  frequent  in  their 
demands,  however,  were  those  which  occur  in  the  yearly  life 
of  Harvard  College.  Holmes  was  perhaps  the  most  com- 


HOLMES  4I3 

pletely  loyal  Harvard  man  of  his  century.  Both  at  the  formal 
ceremonies  of  the  college,  then,  and  at  the  more  intimate 
meetings  of  his  college  class,  he  was  constantly  called  on  for 
poems  which  he  never  failed  to  give.  So  whoever  wants  to 
understand  the  temper  of  Harvard  cannot  do  better  than  satu 
rate  himself  with  those  verses  which  Holmes  has  made  part  of 
the  college  history.  Many  of  these  recall  the  older  traditions 
of  Harvard,  none  more  jauntily  than  the  song  he  wrote  for  the 
two  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  college  in  1836  : 

"  And  when  at  length  the  College  rose, 

The  sachem  cocked  his  eye 
At  every  tutor's  meagre  ribs 

Whose  coat-tails  whistled  by : 
But  when  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  words 

Came  tumbling  from  his  jaws, 
The  copper-coloured  children  all 

Ran  screaming  to  the  squaws. 

"  And  who  was  on  the  Catalogue 

When  college  was  begun  ? 
Two  nephews  of  the  President, 

And  the  Professor's  son  ; 
(They  turned  a  little  Indian  by, 

As  brown  as  any  bun ; ) 
Lord  !  how  the  seniors  knocked  about 

The  freshman  class  of  one  !  " 

More  characteristic  of  his  riper  years  was  an  inimitable  com 
bination  of  reckless  fun  and  tender  sentiment  such  as  makes 
peculiarly  his  own  the  first  verses  of  his  poem  for  the  "  Meet- 
ing  of  the  Alumni"  in  1857  :  — 

"  I  thank  you,  Mr.  President,  you've  kindly  broke  the  ice; 
Virtue  should  always  be  the  first,  —  I  'm  only  Second  Vice  — 
(A  vice  is  something  with  a  screw  that 's  made  to  hold  its  jaw 
Till  some  old  file  has  played  away  upon  an  ancient  saw). 

"  Sweet  brothers  by  the  Mother's  side,  the  babes  of  days  gone  by, 
All  nurslings  of  her  Juno  breasts  whose  milk  is  never  dry, 
We  come  again,  like  half-grown  boys,  and  gather  at  her  beck 
About  her  knees,  and  on  her  lap,  and  clinging  round  her  neck. 


4i4     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

"  We  find  her  at  her  stately  door,  and  in  her  ancient  chair, 
Dressed  in  the  robes  of  red  and  green  she  always  loved  to  wear. 
Her  eye  has  all  its  radiant  youth,  her  cheek  its  morning  flame  ; 
We  drop  our  roses  as  we  go,  hers  flourish  still  the  same." 

His  class  poems,  again,  tell  of  old-fashioned  class  feeling  as 
nothing  else  can.  Here  is  a  random  verse  from  one  that  he 
made  in  1867  :  — 

"  So  when  upon  the  fated  scroll 

The  falling  stars 1  have  all  descended, 
And,  blotted  from  the  breathing  roll, 

Our  little  page  of  life  is  ended, 
We  ask  but  one  memorial  line 

Traced  on  thy  tablet,  Gracious  Mother : 
4  My  children.     Boys  of  '29. 

In  pace.     How  they  loved  each  other ! ' " 

And  Holmes  could  speak  for  the  new  Harvard  as  well  as 
for  the  old.  In  1886,  when  the  college  celebrated  its  two 
hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary,  Lowell  delivered  an  oration 
and  Holmes  a  poem.  He  was  then  an  old  man,  addressed  to  a 
task  of  solemn  dignity,  and  his  verse  lacked  the  vivacity  which 
almost,  to  that  time  had  seemed  perennial ;  but  passages  of  it 
show  him  as  sympathetic  with  the  future  as  his  older  college 
verses  show  him  with  the  past.  Take,  for  example,  the  stirring 
lines  in  which  he  sets  forth  the  conflict  of  Harvard  with  the 
ghost  of  Calvinism  :  — 

"  As  once  of  old  from  Ida's  lofty  height 
The  flaming  signal  flashed  across  the  night, 
So  Harvard's  beacon  sheds  its  unspent  rays 
Till  every  watch-tower  shows  its  kindling  blaze. 
Caught  from  a  spark  and  fanned  by  every  gale, 
A  brighter  radiance  gilds  the  roofs  of  Yale ; 
Amherst  and  Williams  bid  their  flambeaus  shine, 
And  Bowdoin  answers  through  her  groves  of  pine  ; 
O'er  Princeton's  sands  the  far  reflections  steal, 
Where  mighty  Edwards  stamped  his  iron  heel ; 

1  In  the  Quinquennial  Catalogue  of  Harvard,  the  names  of  the  dead  are 
designated  by  asterisks.  When  the  catalogues  were  still  phrased  in  Latin, 
then,  the  Harvard  dead  were  described  by  the  quaintly  barbarous  term 
Stelligeri, 


HOLMES  415 

Nay  on  the  hill 1  where  old  beliefs  were  bound 
Fast  as  if  Styx  had  girt  them  nine  times  round, 
Bursts  such  a  light  that  trembling  souls  inquire 
If  the  whole  church  of  Calvin  is  on  fire  ! 
Well  may  they  ask,  for  what  so  brightly  burns 
As  a  dry  creed  that  nothing  ever  learns  ? 
Thus  link  by  link  is  knit  the  flaming  chain 
Lit  by  the  torch  of  Harvard's  hallowed  plain." 

In  the  form  taken  by  this  most  serious  of  his  occasional 
poems  there  is  something  characteristic.  The  verse  groups  it 
self  in  memory  with  that  of  another  poem,  not  included  in  his 
collected  works,  which  he  read  at  a  dinner  given  in  honour  of 
Lowell's  seventieth  birthday.  Holmes  was  ten  years  older, 
and  Mr.  Sidney  Bartlett,  the  acknowledged  leader  of  the 
Boston  bar,  was  ten  years  older  still.  So  Holmes  made  some 
whimsical  allusion  to  Lowell's  youth  and  then  to  his  own 
maturity;  and  finally  spoke  of  Bartlett, 

"the  lion  of  the  law; 

All  Court  Street  trembles  when  he  leaves  his  den, 
Clad  in  the  pomp  of  fourscore  years  and  ten." 

These  lines  were  read  on  the  22d  of  February,  1889;  yet 
if  any  student  of  English  literature  should  be  given  that 
couplet  by  itself,  he  would  probably  guess  it  to  be  the  work 
of  some  contemporary  of  Alexander  Pope.  The  trait  which 
appears  here  characterises  Holmes's  occasional  verse  through 
out.  So  able  a  critic  as  Mr.  Stedman,  indeed,  holds  it  to 
characterise  all  his  poetry.  In  many  aspects  Holmes's  tem 
per  was  that  of  an  earlier  day  than  his.  As  Mr.  Stedman 
happily  observes,  his  verse  is  not  a  revival  of  eighteenth- 
century  literature,  but  rather  its  last  survival. 

The  more  one  considers  Holrnes's  work  in  its  entirety,  the 
more  significant  one  finds  this  criticism,  which  Mr.  Stedman  first 
uttered  only  of  its  versified  phase.  Revivals  of  the  eight 
eenth  century  —  "  Henry  Esmond,"  for  example,  or  Mr.  Dob- 

i  Andover  Hill. 


416     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

son's  essays  —  have  been  common  enough  in  these  days  when 
all  fine  art  has  been  for  a  while  eclectic.  Modern  artists  are 
more  apt  to  express  themselves  in  the  manner  of  some  bygone 
age  than  in  any  spontaneously  characteristic  of  their  own  time. 
|  Holmes,  however,  seems  as  far  from  artificial  in  manner  as  if 
/  he  had  flourished  at  a  time  which  had  an  instinctively  settled 
style  of  its  own.  That  his  manner  proves  so  much  in  the 
I  spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century,  then,  indicates  something  char 
acteristic  not  only  of  the  man,  but  of  the  world  about  him. 
For  full  fifty  years  he  rarely  stirred  from  New  England ;  no 
other  writer  lived  under  such  completely  local  circumstances. 
His  manner,  then,  so  like  that  prevalent  in  the  mother  coun 
try  a  hundred  years  before,  seems  a  fresh  bit  of  evidence 
that,  despite  our  superficial  modernity,  America  has  lagged 
behind  that  elder  world  with  which  it  has  not  been  at  one 
for  more  than  two  hundred  years. 

The  Boston  where  Holmes  lived,  however,  and  where  fpr 
years  he  was  so  eminent  a  social  figure,  was  the  same  Boston 
which  was  thrilling  with  all  the  fervid  vagaries  of  our  Renais 
sance.  The  old  formal  traditions  had  been  broken ;  our 
native  mind  had  been  enfranchised  ;  and  people  were  search 
ing  the  eternities  for  vistas  of  truth  and  beauty  which  had 
been  obscured  by  the  austere  dogmas  of  Puritanism.  Deeply 
conservative  in  external  temper,  loving  social  order,  and  dis 
trusting  vagaries  of  thought  and  of  conduct  alike,  Holmes 
had  small  sympathy  with  the  extravagances  of  Transcendental 
ism  or  of  reform ;  but  he  could  not  have  been  truly  contem 
porary  with  these  movements  without  catching  something  of 
their  spirit.  So  if  in  one  aspect  he  was  what  Mr.  Stedman 
/has  called  him,  a  survivor  of  the  eighteenth  century,  in  an 
other  he  was  inevitably  a  Yankee  of  the  Renaissance. 

Like  the  men  about  him,  he  was  seized  with  an  impulse  to 
search  for  truth  and  to  report  it.  What  chiefly  distinguishes 
him  from  the  rest  is  that  they  were  most  deeply  stirred  by  the 
charm  of  romanticism.  They  were  attracted  by  ideal  phi- 


HOLMES  417 

losophy  and  mediaeval  poetry.  In  such  history,  too,  as  had 
hitherto  been  neglected  by  New  England,  they  found  most 
stimulating  and  satisfying  those  passages  which  appeal  to 
romantic  emotion.  I  ntKlsTjh'ey  delfgnTed  with  all  the  ardour 
of  a  race  which  for  two  hundred  years  had  been  aesthetically 
starved.  America,  however,  had  been  poor  in  another  range 
of  human  experience.  Throughout  Europe,  the  eighteenth 
century  was  a  period  of  alert  common  sense,  observing  life 
keenly,  commenting  on  it  with  astonishing  wit,  but  generally 
behaving  as  if  romantic  emotion  might  be  disregarded  as 
superstitious.  When  the  Renaissance  finally  dawned  on  New 
England,  then,  New  England  lacked  not  only  the  untrammelled 
romanticism  of  a  dozen  old  centuries,  but  also  the  eager 
rationalism  which  had  been  the  most  characteristic  trait  of 
eighteenth-century  Europe. 

This  feature  of  the  new  learning  Holmes  found  most  con 
genial.  In  the  form  and  spirit  of  his  verse,  as  Mr.  Stedman 
says,  there  is  something  which  makes  him  a  survival  of  the 
eighteenth  century  ;  and  though  the  form  of  his  prose  is  freely 
individual,  its  spirit  seems  as  essentially  that  of  the  eighteenth 
century  as  if  every  line  of  his  essays  and  novels  had  been 
thrown  into  heroic  couplets. 

The  first  instalment  of  his  final  "  Autocrat  of  the  Break 
fast  Table  "  —  revived  after  that  casual  interruption  of  twenty- 
five  years  —  appeared  in  the  first  number  of  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly"  in  the  autumn  of  1857.  Within  the  next  thirty 
years  Holmes  produced  four  volumes  of  such  essays  as  the 
"  Autocrat,"  and  three  more  or  less  formal  novels.  Through 
out  this  prose  work  of  his  maturity  and  his  age,  —  he  was 
nearly  fifty  years  old  when  it  began,  —  one  feels  the  shrewd, 
swift,  volatile  mind  of  a  witty  man  of  the  world.  One  feels, 
too,  the  temper  of  a  trained  though  not  very  learned  man  of 
science  ;  education  and  professional  experience  combined  with 
native  good  sense  to  make  him  understand  the  value  of  de 
monstrable  fact.  One  feels  almost  as  surely  another  trait, 

27 


4i8     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

too.  Holmes  could  not  have  been  a  Bostonian  during  those 
years  of  Renaissance  when  Boston  was  the  intellectual  centre 
of  America,  without  keen  interest  in  something  like  mys 
ticism  5  but  beyond  any  other  New  England  man  of  his  time 
Holmes  treats  mystical  vagaries  as  only  fancies,  —  beautiful, 
perhaps,  and  stimulating,  bur  inherently  beyond  the  range  of 
assertion  as  distinguished  from  speculation.  In  one  sense  no 
Transcendentalist  more  constantly  devoted  himself  to  the  task 
of  proving  all  things  and  holding  fast  those  which  were 
good.  From  beginning  to  end,  however,  Holmes  knew  that 
things  can  truly  be  proved  only  by  observation  and  experi 
ment.  So  just  as  in  our  final  view  of  the  New  England  Re 
naissance  Ticknor  seems  its  most  eminent  scholar,  Longfellow 
its  most  typical  poet,  and  Lowell  its  deepest  humanist,  so 
f  Holmes  seems  its  one  uncompromising  rationalist. 

This  aspect  of  him  goes  far  to  explain  afresh  why  of  all  his 
contemporaries  he  was  the  most  abhorrent  to  Calvinists.  The 
phase  of  mental  activity  which  is  least  compatible  with  dogma 
is  an  ardent  rational  spirit  ;  and  here  the  orthodox  Calvinists  of 
New  England  found  the  son  of  one  of  their  most  sturdy  lead 
ers,  lapsed  into  Unitarianism,  enjoying  a  career  of  social  com 
fort  and  distinction  forbidden  them,  and  expressing  himself  in 
the  temper  which  of  all  imaginable  was  most  hostile  to  their 
dogmatic  faith  in  the  damnable  wickedness  of  human  nature. 
What  was  more,  his  personal  life  was  such  as  to  warrant  the 
respect  and  kindliness  with  which  his  friends  regarded  him. 
But  the  devil  showed  plain  traces  in  Holmes's  way  of  talking 
lightly.  If  this  world  is  what  the  Calvinists  hold  it,  for  most 
of  us  only  the  antechamber  of  damnation,  such  frivolity  of 
manner  is  among  the  most  appalling  evidences  of  depravity. 
Holmes's  rationalism,  then,  advanced  with  all  the  gay  ease  of 
a  fashion  from  which  orthodoxy  was  debarred,  might  seem 
enough  to  account  for  orthodox  detestation  of  him. 

As  you  read  his  work,  however,  with  this  matter  in  view, 
you  will  find  a  deeper  reason  still.  Holmes's  youth  had  been 


HOLMES  419 

surrounded  by  the  strictest  Calvinism,  at  a  moment  when  New 
England  Calvinism  had  outlived  its  vitality  and  when  the 
spiritual  thought  of  his  native  region  was  at  last  taking  its  en 
franchised  Unitarian  form.  The  whole  horror  of  the  old  sys 
tem,  then,  with  its  inhuman  limitation  of  intellectual  and 
spiritual  freedom,  had  been  within  his  personal  experience  at 
the  period  of  life  when  impressions  sink  deepest.  He  early 
developed  the  liberal  and  kindly  rationalism  so  admirably 
expressed  in  his  personal  and  literary  career.  The  horrors  of 
the  elder  creed,  however,  were  seared  into  his  brain.  In  his 
later  life,  whether  actually  aware  of  them  or  not,  he  could 
never  efface  them  from  his  subconsciousness.  Long  ago, 
when  we  were  trying  to  understand  Jonathan  Edwards,  we 
found  ourselves  contemplating  that  famous  "One-Hoss  Shay  " 
of  Holmes's,  with  which  the  impregnable  logic  of  Calvinism 
somehow  came  to  smash.  Far  from  standing  alone  in  his 
work,  this  well-known  piece  of  verse  seems  rather  to  typify 
the  greater  part  of  it. 

Take  u  Elsie  Venner,"  for  example,  his  first  and  most  con 
siderable  novel.  Although  amateurish  in  detail,  the  book  is 
vivid  with  New  England  life ;  but  the  gist  of  it  is  abhorrent 
to  every  tradition  of  the  ancestral  Calvinists.  The  fiction, 
which,  to  use  one  of  Holmes's  own  terms,  is  medicated 
throughout,  is  designed  to  suggest  that  purely  physical  causes 
can  so  affect  moral  nature  as  to  make  gravely  doubtful  how 
far  human  beings  ought  to  be  held  morally  responsible.  What 
is  more,  Holmes  does  not  hesitate  openly  to  expound  this 
doctrine.  A  student  of  medicine,  for  example,  puzzled  by  the 
case  of  ante-natal  impression  which  forms  the  basis  of  the 
plot,  writes  about  it  to  one  of  his  professors.  This  incident 
gives  the  professor  an  opportunity  to  reply  as  follows  :  — 

"  Your  question  about  inherited  predispositions,  as  limiting  the 
sphere  of  the  will,  and,  consequently,  of  moral  accountability,  opens  a 
very  wide  range  of  speculation.  I  can  give  you  only  a  brief  abstract 
of  my  own  opinion  of  this  delicate  and  difficult  subject.  Crime  and 


420     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

sin,  being  the  preserves  of  two  great  organised  interests,  have  been 
guarded  against  all  reforming  poachers  with  as  great  jealousy  as  the 
Royal  Forests.  It  is  so  easy  to  hang  a  troublesome  fellow  !  It  is  so 
much  simpler  to  consign  a  soul  to  perdition,  or  to  say  masses,  for 
money,  to  save  it,  than  to  take  the  blame  on  ourselves  for  letting  it 
grow  up  in  neglect  and  run  to  ruin  for  want  of  humanising  in 
fluences.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  very  singular  that  we  recognise  all  the  bodily  defects  that  un 
fit  a  man  for  military  service,  and  all  the  intellectual  ones  that  limit  his 
range  of  thought,  but  always  talk  at  him  as  if  all  his  moral  powers 
were  perfect.  I  suppose  we  must  punish  evildoers  as  we  extirpate 
vermin  ;  but  I  don't  know  that  we  have  any  more  right  to  judge  them 
than  we  have  to  judge  rats  and  mice,  which  are  just  as  good  as  cats 
and  weasels,  though  we  think  it  necessary  to  treat  them  as  criminals." 

The  passage  from  the  "  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table  " 
irj  which  Holmes  savagely  satirises  both  the  dogmas  and  the 
discipline  of  Calvinistic  orthodoxy  is  perhaps  better  known : 

i  "  If,  before  a  medical  practitioner  would  allow  me  to  enjoy  the  full 
privileges  of  the  healing  art,"  it  begins,  "  he  expected  me  to  affirm  my 
belief  in  a  considerable  number  of  medical  doctrines,  drugs,  and  for 
mulae,  I  should  think  that  he  thereby  implied  my  right  to  discuss  the 
same,  and  my  ability  to  do  so,  if  I  knew  how  to  express  myself  in 
English. 

"  Suppose,  for  instance,  the  Medical  Society  should  refuse  to  give 
us  an  opiate,  or  to  set  a  broken  limb,  until  we  had  signed  our  belief  in 
a  certain  number  of  propositions,  —  of  which  we  will  say  this  is  the 
first :  — 

"  I.  All  men's  teeth  are  naturally  in  a  state  of  total  decay,  or  caries ; 
and,  therefore,  no  one  can  bite  until  every  one  of  them  is  extracted 
and  a  new  set  is  inserted  according  to  the  principles  of  dentistry 
adopted  by  this  Society. 

"  I,  for  one,  should  want  to  discuss  that  before  signing  my  name  to 
it,  and  I  should  say  this  :  —  Why,  no,  that  is  n't  true."  — 

And  so  on. 

Nor  were  Holmes's  attacks  on  the  Calvinists  only  indirect. 
Some  years  ago  the  innumerable  missionary  and  other  godly 
societies  which  had  sprung  up  in  Boston  were  accustomed  to 
hold  their  annual  meetings  at  about  the  same  time  every  spring. 
The  feast  of  spiritual  stimulant  thus  afforded  by  Anniversary 
Week  attracted  to  town  such  flocks  of  blackbirds  from  the 


HOLMES  421 

country  pulpits  that  the  face  of  the  Common  was  annually 
darkened.  To  most  people  the  sight  of  these  visitants  was 
mildly  amusing.  To  Holmes  they  suggested  rather  such  sen 
timents  as  he  set  forth  in  the  u  Moral  Bully  "  :  — 

"  Yon  whey-faced  brother,  who  delights  to  wear 
A  weedy  flux  of  ill-conditioned  hair, 
Seems  of  the  sort  that  in  a  crowded  place 
One  elbows  freely  into  smallest  space ; 
A  timid  creature,  lax  of  knee  and  hip, 
Whom  small  disturbance  whitens  round  the  lip ; 
One  of  those  harmless  spectacled  machines, 
The  Holy-Week  of  Protestants  convenes ; 

Conspicuous,  annual,  in  their  threadbare  suits, 
And  the  laced  high-lows  which  they  call  their  boots, 
Well  mayst  thou  shun  that  dingy  front  severe, 
But  him,  O  stranger,  him  thou  canst  KQtfear ! 

"  Be  slow  to  judge,  and  slower  to  despise, 
Man  of  broad  shoulders  and  heroic  size ! 

In  that  lean  phantom,  whose  extended  glove 
Points  to  the  text  of  universal  love, 
Behold  the  master  that  can  tame  thee  down 
To  crouch  the  vassal  of  his  Sunday  frown; 
His  velvet  throat  against  thy  corded  wrist, 
His  loosened  tongue  against  thy  doubled  fist ! 

"  The  MORAL  BULLY,  though  he  never  swears, 
Nor  kicks  intruders  down  his  entry  stairs, 
Though  meekness  plants  his  backward-sloping  hat, 
And  non-resistance  ties  his  white  cravat, 
Though  his  black  broadcloth  glories  to  be  seen 
In  the  same  plight  with  Shylock's  gaberdine, 
Hugs  the  same  passion  to  his  narrow  breast, 
That  heaves  the  cuirass  on  the  trooper's  chest, 
Hears  the  same  hell-hounds  yelling  in  his  rear 
That  chase  from  port  the  maddened  buccaneer, 
Feels  the  same  comfort  while  his  acrid  words, 
Turn  the  sweet  milk  of  kindness  into  curds, 
Or  with  grim  logic  prove,  beyond  debate, 
That  all  we  love  is  worthiest  our  hate, 
As  the  scarred  ruffian  of  the  pirate's  deck, 
When  his  long  swivel  rakes  the  staggering  wreck ! " 


422     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Such  were  Holmes's  comments  on  his  contemporaries  who 
followed  in  the  footsteps  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  Of  Edwards 
himself  he  wrote,  if  possible,  more  plainly  still :  — 

"  The  practical  effect  of  Edwards's  teachings  about  the  relations  of 
God  and  man  has  bequeathed  a  lesson  not  to  be  forgotten.  A  revival 
in  which  the  majority  of  converts  fell  away ;  nervous  disorders  of  all 
sorts,  insanity,  suicide,  among  the  rewards  of  his  eloquence ;  Religion 
dressed  up  in  fine  phrases  and  made  much  of,  while  Morality,  her  Poor 
Relation,  was  getting  hard  treatment  at  the  hands  of  the  young  persons 
who  had  grown  up  under  the  reign  of  terror  of  the  Northampton  pul 
pit;  alienation  of  the  hearts  of  his  people  to  such  an  extent  as  is 
rarely  seen  in  the  bitterest  quarrels  between  pastor  and  flock,  —  if  this 
was  a  successful  ministry,  what  disasters  would  constitute  a  failure  ?  " 

The  truth  is  that  Holmes  was  not  only  antagonistic  to  the 
temper  of  Calvinism  in  life  and  character ;  he  was  also  its 
most  openly  and  bitterly  persistent  opponent.  The  more  you 
read  his  prose,  the  more  you  feel  his  consciousness  of  the  old 
creed  cropping  out  in  places  where  you  least  expect  it.  The 
traditional  Unitarianism  of  New  England  was  apt  to  neglect 
orthodoxy  ;  Holmes  could  not.  The  dogmas  of  Calvin  lurked 
constantly  in  his  mind  ;  and  he  never  failed  to  attack  them. 
This  hideous  system  is  untrue,  he  protests ;  he  will  deny  it ; 
he  will  oppose  it  in  every  possible  way ;  if  so  may  be  he  will 
leave  the  world  better  for  his  work  in  the  destruction  of  this 
most  monstrous  of  its  spiritual  errors.  So  Holmes,  who  in  his 
superficial  life  is  remembered  as  the  wittiest  and  happiest  of 
New  England  social  figures,  and  as  the  most  finished  as  well 
as  the  most  tenderly  sentimental  maker  of  our  occasional  verse, 
and  who  wrote  so  much  even  of  his  most  serious  work  with 
the  temper  and  the  manner  of  a  wit,  proves  to  have  another 
aspect.  Among  our  men  of  letters  this  rationalist  was  the 
most  sturdy,  the  most  militant,  the  most  pitiless  enemy  of  a 
superstition  whose  tyranny  over  his  childhood  had  left  life 
long  scars.  In  the  persistency  with  which  this  spectre  of 
Calvinism  rose  before  him  there  was  something  which  he  may 
well  have  fancied  to  be  like  the  diabolic  possessions  so  fer- 


HOLMES  423 

vently  believed  in  by  the  Puritan  fathers.  He  might  lay  the 
spectre  again  and  again,  but  every  time  he  took  up  his  pen  it 
would  arise  inhuman  as  ever.  That  he  never  relaxed  his  fight 
shows  rare  courage.  From  beginning  to  end,  then,  Holmes 
was  a  survivor  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Brave  rationalistic 
attack  on  outworn  superstitions  is  the  bravest  note  of  that  past 
epoch. 

If  there  be  any  one  European  figure  whose  position  in 
world  literature  is  analogous  to  that  of  Holmes  in  the  litera 
ture  of  New  England,  it  is  Voltaire.  The  differences  between 
Voltaire  and  Holmes,  to  be  sure,  are  so  much  more  marked 
than  the  analogies  that  any  analogy  may  at  first  seem  fantas 
tic.  For  all  his  eminence,  Voltaire  was  not  born  a  gentleman 
and  never  had  quite  the  traits  of  one  ;  in  our  little  New  Eng 
land  there  was  never  a  better  gentleman  than  Holmes.  Vol 
taire  was  a  man  of  licentious  life  and  pitiless  temper,  incensed 
and  distracted  by  all  the  old-world  corruptions  which  he  spent 
his  wits  in  stabbing  to  death  ;  Holmes's  life  had  all  the  simple 
provincial  decency  and  kindliness  of  his  country.  Voltaire's 
wit  was  the  keenest  and  most  sustained  of  modern  Europe  ; 
the  wit  of  Holmes,  after  all,  was  only  the  most  delightful  which 
has  amused  nineteenth-century  Boston.  For  all  these  differ 
ences,  there  is  a  true  analogy  between  them  :  both  alike,  with 
superficial  frivolity,  bravely  devoted  themselves  to  lifelong  war 
against  what  they  believed  to  be  delusions  which  terribly  im 
peded  the  progress  of  human  nature  towards  a  better  future. 
And  each  was  so  earnest  that  neither  could  help  expressing 
himself  in  such  manner  as  to  his  nature  was  true.  Vol 
taire's  wit,  then,  teems  with  blasphemy  and  licentiousness  ; 
that  of  Holmes  is  pure  of  either.  This  does  not  mean  that 
one  man  was  essentially  better  or  worse  than  the  other  ;  it 
means  rather  that  the  worlds  in  which  they  lived  and  the 
superstitions  which  they  combated  were  different. 

Voltaire  died  in  1770;  Holmes  as  a  writer  of  prose  hardly 
existed  before  1857.  The  two  are  a  full  century  apart,  yet 


424     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

there  is  between  them  such  likeness  as  almost  seems  intellect 
ually  contemporary.  In  the  contrast  between  them,  then, 
there  is  something  which  freshly  throws  familiar  light  on  New 
England.  The  contrast  between  Holmes  and  Voltaire,  if  in 
one  sense  a  contrast  between  the  eighteenth  century  and  the 
nineteenth,  is  in  another  sense  a  contrast  between  a  foul  old 
Europe  and  an  America  still  pure  in  its  national  inexperience. 
Above  all,  it  is  a  contrast  which  distinctly  shows  what  freshness 
of  nature  and  feeling  still  marked  America  in  Holmes's  time. 
Few  man  ever  expressed  themselves  less  guardedly  than  he  ;  yet 
so  far  as  licentiousness  or  blasphemy  is  concerned  every  line  of 
his  printed  works  may  be  put  unreservedly  in  the  hands  of 
any  child.  Even  to  our  own  time  the  history  of  American 
human  nature  implies  our  national  inexperience.  In  the  New 
England  Renaissance,  rationalism  itself,  and  all  the  freedom  of 
earnest  satire,  appears  for  once  void  of  impurity. 


XIV 

NATHANIEL      HAWTHORNE 

IN    our   study  of  the   New   England    Renaissance   we    have  -i 
glanced    at    Emerson,  whom  we    may  call    its    prophet ;    at  / 
Whittier,  who  so  admirably  phrased  its  aspirations  for  reform ; 
at  Longfellow,  its  academic  poet ;   at  Lowell,  its  humanist ; 
and  at  Holmes,  its  rationalist.     The  period  produced  but  one 
other  literary  figure  of  equal  eminence  with  these,  —  Nathaniel-1 
Hawthorne,  above  and  beyond  the  others  an  artist. 

His  origin  was  different  from  that  of  his  contemporaries 
whom  we  have  lately  considered.  Emerson  and  Longfellow 
and  Lowell  and  Holmes  were  all  born  into  the  social  class 
which  at  their  time  was  dominant  in  New  England;  and 
Whittier  sprang  from  sturdy  country  yeomen.  Hawthorne 
came  from  a  family  eminent  in  early  colonial  days,  but  long 
lapsed  into  that  sort  of  obscurity  which  modern  cant  would  call 
social  degeneracy.  His  father,  a  ship  captain  of  the  period 
when  New  England  commerce  was  most  vigorous,  died  in 
Guiana  when  Hawthorne  was  only  four  years  old  ;  and  the 
boy,  who  had  been  born  at  Salem  in  1804,  grew  up  there  in 
his  mother's  care,  singularly  solitary.  His  youthful  experience 
was  confined  to  Salem,  then  a  more  important  town  than 
now,  but  already  showing  symptoms  of  decline.  He  macjp  at 
least  one  prolonged  visit  in  search  of  health  to  the  woods  of 
Maine.  To  this  day  wild  and  then  wilder  still,  these  forests 
early  made  familiar  to  him  the  atmosphere  of  our  ancestral 
wilderness.  In  1821  he  went  to  Bowdoin  College.  There  he 
was  a  classmate  of  Longfellow,  and  of  Franklin  Pierce,  after 
wards  President  of  the  United  States.  His  friendship  with 


426     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

the  latter  was  close  and  lifelong.       In   1825,  they  took  their 
degrees  at   Bowdoin. 

For  the  ensuing  fourteen  years  Hawthorne  lived  with  his 
mother  at  Salem,  so  quietly  that  his  existence  was  hardly  known 
to  the  townsfolk  of  that  gossipy  little  Yankee  seaport.  He 
spent  much  time  indoors,  constantly  writing  but  neither  suc 
cessful  nor  generally  recognised  as  an  author.  He  took  long 
solitary  walks,  and  his  personal  appearance  is  said  to  have  been 
romantic  and  picturesque.  In  1839  he  was  appointed  a  clerk 
in  the  Boston  Custom  House;  in  1841  the  spoils  system 
turned  him  out  of  office,  and  for  a  few  months  he  was  at 
Brook  Farm.  The  next  year  he  married,  and  from  then  until 
1846  he  lived  at  Concord,  writing  and  by  this  time  pleasantly 
recognised  as  a  writer  of  short  stories.  From  1 846  to  1 849 
he  was  Surveyor  in  the  Custom  House  of  Salem.  During 
the  ensuing  four  years,  when  he  resided  at  various  places  in 
Massachusetts,  he  produced  his  three  most  characteristic  long 
books,  —  the  "Scarlet  Letter,"  the  "House  of  the  Seven' 
Gables,"  and  the  "  Blithedale  Romance,"  —  as  well  as  his  two 
volumes  of  mythological  stories  for  children,  the  "  Wonder- 
book  "  and  "Tanglewood  Tales."  In  1853,  n^s  friend,  Presi 
dent  Pierce,  made  him  Consul  at  Liverpool.  He  remained 
abroad  until  1860,  passing  some  time  during  his  later  stay  there 
in  Italy.  From  this  experience  resulted  the  "  Marble  Faun." 
In  1860,  he  came  home  and  returned  to  Concord,  where 
he  lived  thenceforth.  He  died  in  the  White  Mountains,  on 
the  1 8th  of  May,  1864. 

Chronologically,  then,  Hawthorne's  position  in  New  Eng- 
Ian4  literature  seems  earlier  than  that  of  his  contemporaries  at 
whom  we  have  glanced.  He  was  only  a  year  younger  than 
Emerson,  he  was  three  years  older  than  Longfellow  and 
Whittier,  five  years  older  than  Holmes,  and  fifteen  years  older 
than  Lowell.  He  died  thirty-six  years  ago  ;  and  Emerson  and 
Longfellow  survived  until  1882,  Lowell  till  1891,  Whittier 
till  1892,  and  Holmes  till  1895.  Though  Hawthorne,  how- 


HA  WTHORNE  427 

ever,  was  the  first  to  die  of  this  little  company,  he  had  been  a 
fellow-writer  with  them  during  the  thirty  years  when  the  full 
literary  career  of  all  had  declared  itself.  In  the  time  which 
followed  Hawthorne's  death,  the  survivors  wrote  and  pub 
lished  copiously;  but  none  produced  anything  which  much 
altered  the  reputation  he  had  achieved  while  Hawthorne  was 
still  alive.  So  far  as  character  goes,  in  short,  the  literature  of 
renascent  New  England  was  virtually  complete  in  1864. 

Under  such  circumstances  chronology  becomes  accidental. 
The  order  in  which  to  consider  contemporaries  is  a  question 
simply  of  their  relative  character.  We  had  good  reason,  then, 
for  reserving  Hawthorne  till  the  last ;  for  above  all  the  rest,  as 
we  have  already  remarked,  he  was  an  artist.  This  term  is  so 
general  that  we  may  well  linger  on  it  for  a  moment.  A  little 
story  of  the  Yankee  country  may  help  define  our  meaning. 
Not  long  ago  a  sportsman,  who  had  started  out  in  a  dory 
along  with  a  native  fisherman,  found  himself  becalmed  at 
night  off  the  New  Hampshire  coast.  Observing  that  the 
fisherman,  who  had  sat  quiet  for  a  little  while,  was  staring  at 
the  North  Star,  he  asked  what  he  was  thinking  about.  "  I  was 
thinkin',"  drawled  out  the  Yankee,  "  how  fur  off  you  'd  hev 
to  be  to  get  that  south  of  you."  Whereupon  he  shook  him 
self  and  fell  to  his  oars.  That  momentary  experience,  you 
see,  had  awakened  in  a  Yankee  countryman  something  like 
imaginative  emotion.  He  spoke  it  out,  and  then  forgot  it ; 
but  just  for  a  moment  he  had  felt  the  impulse  of  artistic 
spirit,  and  had  found  relief  in  an  expression  imaginative  enough 
to  be  memorable.  Some  such  experience  as  this  everybody 
knows  sometimes,  many  people  often ;  and  occasionally  there 
are  born  into  the  world  natures  so  sensitive  to  impressions  that 
they  find  almost  every  day  overcharged  with  emotions  from 
which  they  can  find  relief  only  in  attempts  at  expression. 
Generally  such  expression  is  of  only  momentary  value.  Now 
and  again,  however,  some  human  being  proves  endowed  not  only 
with  sensitiveness  to  impulse  but  with  mastery  of  expression 


428     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

as  well.  Such  a  man,  whatever  his  art,  is  an  artist ;  and  such 
was  Hawthorne. 

It  chances  that  fate  has  posthumously  treated  him  with  ex 
ceptional  irony.  The  general  solitude  of  his  life  was  partly 
due  to  a  fastidious  reticence  which  made  him  shrink  from  per 
sonal  revelation.  This  trait  was  not  inherited  by  his  children  ; 
so  since  his  death  we  have  had  more  publications  from  his 
note-books,  and  more  records  of  his  private  life  than  is  the 
case  with  anybody  else  in  American  literary  history.  Among 
these  posthumous  records  none  are  more  characteristic  or 
valuable  than  the  first  which  appeared.  The  "  Passages  from 
American  Note  Books,"  published  in  1868,  extend  over  many 
years,  mostly  before  Hawthorne's  sojourn  abroad.  For  our 
purposes  they  are  perhaps  the  most  significant  of  all  his  work. 
They  show  him  in  various  parts  of  the  New  England  country, 
freshly  impressed  almost  every  day  with  some  aspect  of  life 
which  aroused  in  him  concrete  reaction.  He  actually  pub 
lished  tales  enough  to  establish  more  than  one  literary  reputa 
tion.  These  note-books  show  how  few  fragments  of  his 
wealthy  imaginative  impulse  he  ever  coined  into  finished  lit 
erary  form.  They  reveal,  too,  another  characteristic  fact. 
Though  Hawthorne  wrote  hardly  any  formal  verse,  though  his 
natural  impulse  to  expression  rarely  if  ever  took  metrical  form, 
he  was  a  genuine  poet.  His  only  vehicle  of  expression  was 
language,  and  to  him  language  meant  not  only  words  but 
rhythm  too.  Even  in  these  memoranda,  then,  which  he  never 
expected  to  stray  beyond  his  note-books,  you  feel  the  constant 
touch  of  one  whose  meaning  is  so  subtle  that  its  most  careless 
expression  must  fall  into  delicately  careful  phrasing. 

Such  a  temperament  would  inevitably  have  declared  itself 
anywhere.  Some  critics,  then,  have  lamented  the  accident 
which  confined  Hawthorne's  experience  for  almost  fifty  years 
to  isolated,  aesthetically  starved  New  England.  In  this  opin 
ion  there  is  considerable  justice.  The  extreme  localism  of 
Hawthorne's  life,  until  his  maturity  was  passing  into  age,  may 


HA  WTHORNE  429 

very  likely  have  made  world  literature  poorer.  The  "  Marble 
Faun  "  is  our  only  indication  of  what  he  might  have  done  if 
his  sensitive  youth  had  been  exposed  to  the  unfathomably 
human  influence  of  Europe.  Yet,  whatever  our  loss,  we  can 
hardly  regret  an  accident  so  fortunate  to  the  literature  of  New 
England. 

This  Hawthorne,  whose  artistic  temperament  would  have 
been  remarkable  anywhere,  chanced  to  be  born  in  an  old 
Yankee  seaport,  just  at  its  zenith.  It  was  soon  to  be  stricken 
by  the  Embargo,  and  swiftly  to  be  surpassed  by  a  more  pros 
perous  neighbour.  When  he  knew  it  best,  it  was  like  some 
iridescent  old  sea-shell,  whose  denizens  are  dead  and  gone, 
but  whose  hollows  still  faintly  vibrate  with  the  voices  of  the 
illimitable  waters.  From  this  passing,  ancestral  Salem  he 
visited  those  woods  of  Maine  which  were  still  so  primeval  as 
to  recall  the  shadowy  forests  whose  mystery  confronted  the 
immigrant  Puritans.  Then  he  lived  for  a  while  in  Boston, 
just  when  Transcendentalism  was  most  in  the  air  ;  and  he  had 
a  glimpse  of  Brook  £arm  ;  and^hepassej  more  than  one  year 
in  the  Old  Manse  at  Concord  ;  and  finally  he  strayed  among 
the  hills  of  Berkshire.  Until  he  finally  set  sail  for  Eng 
land,  however,  he  had  never  known  any  earthly  region  which 
had  not  traditionally  been  dominated  by  the  spirit,  of  the 
Puritans ;  nor  any  which  in  his  own  time  was  not  ajive,  so 
far  as  life  was  in  it,  with  the  spirit  of  the  New  England 
Renaissance. 

In  considering  this  period,  we  have  hitherto  dwelt  only  on 
its  most  obvious  aspect.  Like  any  revelation  of  new  life,  it 
seemed  to  open  the  prospect  of  an  illimitably^  excellent  future. 
Amid  such  buoyant  hopes  people  think  little  of  the  past,  tend 
ing  indeed  to  regard  it  like  some  night  of  darkness  to  which  at 
last  the  dawn  has  brought  an  end.  They  forget  the  infinite 
mysteries  of  the  night,  its  terrors  and  its  dreamy  beauties,  and 
the  courage  of  those  who  throughout  its  tremulous  course 
have  watched  and  prayed.  So  when  the  dawn  comes  they 


430     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

forget  that  the  birth  of  day  is  the  death  of  night.  Thus  the 
men  of  our  New  England  Renaissance  forgot  that  their  new, 
enfranchised  life  and  literature  meant  the  final  passing  of  that 
elder  New  England  so  hopefully  founded  by  the  Puritan 
fathers.  As  our  Renaissance  has  passed  its  swift  zenith,  and 
begun  itself  to  recede  into  dimming  memory,  we  can  see  more 
plainly  than  of  old  this  tragic  aspect  of  its  earthly  course. 
The  world  in  which  Hawthorne  lived  and  wrote  was  not 
only  a  world  where  new  ideals  were  springing  into  life ;  it 
was  a  world,  too,  where  the  old  ideals  were  suffering  their 
agony. 

*  Of  all  our  men  of  letters  Hawthorne  was  most  sensitive  to 
this  phase  of  the  time  when  they  flourished  together.  He  was 
not,  like  Emerson,  a  prophet  striving  to  glean  truths  from  un 
explored  fields  of  eternity ;  he  was  not,  like  Whittier,  a 
patient  limner  of  simple  nature,  or  a  passionate  advocate  of 
moral  reform  ;  he  was  not,  like  Longfellow  or  Lowell,  a  lov 
ing  student  of  world  literature,  moved  by  erudition  to  the  ex 
pression  of  what  meaning  he  had  found  in  the  records  of  a 
wonderful  foreign  past  ;  he  was  not,  like  Holmes,  a  combatant 
who,  with  all  the  vivacity  of  lifelong  wit  and  all  the  method  of 
scientific  training,  rationally  attacked  the  chimeras  of  his  time; 
he  was  an  artist,  who  lived  for  nearly  fifty  years  only  in  his 
native,country,  daily  stirred  to  attempt  expression  of  what  our 
Yankee  life  meant.  Of  all  oi^r  men  of  letters  he  was  the 
most  indigenous  ;  of  all,  the  least^jmitative. 

By  hastily  comparing  his^worlcfthen,  with  some  which  was 
produced  in  England  during  the  same  years,  we  may  perhaps 
define  our  notion  of  what  the  peculiar  trait  of  American  letters 
has  been.  His  first  collection  of  "  Twice  Told  Tales  " 
appeared  in  1837  ;  in  England,  where  the  Queen  had  just 
come  to  the  throne,  Dickens  published  "  Oliver  Twist,"  and 
Thackeray  the  "  Yellowplush  Papers."  The  second  series  of 
"Twice  Told  Tales"  came  in  1842,  when  Bulwer  published 
"  Zanoni,"  and  Dickens  his  "  American  Notes,"  and  Macaulay 


HAWTHORNE  431 

bis  "  Lays."  In  1846,  when  Hawthorne  published  the 
"  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,"  Dickens  published  "  Dombey 
and  Son."  In  1850,  the  year  of  the  "  Scarlet  Letter,"  came 
Mrs.  Browning's  "  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,"  and  Car- 
lyle's  "  Latter  Day  Pamphlets,"  and  Tennyson's  "  In  Me- 
moriam;"  in  1851,  along  with  the  "House  of  the  Seven 
Gables,"  came  "  Casa  Guidi  Windows"  and  the  "Stones  of 
Venice;"  in  1852,  with  the  "  Blithedale  Romance,"  came 
Dickens's  "  Bleak  House,"  and  Charles  Reade's  "  Peg  Woff- 
ington,"  and  Thackeray's  "  Henry  Esmond;  "  in  1853,  a^ong 
with  "  Tanglewood  Tales,"  came  Kingsley's  "  Hypatia,"  Bul- 
wer's  "  My  Novel,"  and  Miss  Yonge's  "  Heir  of  Redclyffe ;  " 
and  in  the  year  of  the  "Marble  Faun,"  1860,  came  the 
"  Woman  in  White,"  the  "  Mill  on  the  Floss,"  the  "  Cloister 
and  the  Hearth,"  and  the  last  volume  of  "  Modern  Painters." 
The  list  already  grows  tediously  long  for  our  purpose.  Like 
Irving  and  Poe,  the  two  Americans  who  preceded  him  as  liter 
ary  artists,  Hawthorne  proves,  the  moment  you  compare  him 
with  the  contemporary  writers  of  England,  to  be  gifted  or 
hampered  with  a  pervasive  sense  of  form  which  one  is  half 
disposed  to  call  classic. 

Yet  that  term  "  classic,"  applied  even  to  Irving,  and  still  more* 
to  Poe  or  Hawthorne,  must  seem  paradoxical  if  one  has  sym 
pathetically  read  them.  Such  terms  as  "  romantic "  and 
"  classic  "  of  course  are  inexactly  bewildering  ;  but  for  general 
purposes  one  would  not  go  far  wrong  who  should  include  under 
the  term  "  classic  "that  sort  of  human  impulse  which  reached  its 
highest  form  in  the  fine  arts  of  Greece,  and  under  the  term  "  ro 
mantic  "  that  which  most  nearly  approached  realization  in  the 
art  and  the  literature  of  mediaeval  Europe.  The  essence  of 
classic  art  is  perhaps  that  the  artist  realises  the  limits  of  his  con 
ception,  and  within  those  limits  endeavours  to  make  his  expres 
sion  completely  beautiful.  The  essence  of  the  romantic  spirit 
is  that  the  artist,  whatever  his  conception,  is  always  aware  of  the 
infinite  mysteries  which  lie  beyond  it.  Mr.  Cabot,  in  hSRriog- 


432     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

raphy  of  Emerson,  described  Transcendentalism  as  an  out 
break  of \romanjjgism.  The  romantic  spirit  is  almost  always 
transcendental. 

Now,  even  the  stories  of  Irving  are  pervaded  with  one  kind 
of  romantic  temper,  —  that  which  delights  in  the  splendours 
of  a  vanished  past,  and  in  the  mysteries  of  supernatural 
fancy.  Something  more  deeply  romantic  underlies  the 
inarticulate  work  of  Brockden  Brown,  and  still  more  the 
poems  and  the  tales  of  Poe.  Both  Brown  and  Poe  had  a 
deep  sense  of  what  horror  may  lurk  in  the  mysteries  which 
always  lie  beyond  human  ken.  Even  Brown,  however,  and 
surely  Poe  conceived  these  melodramatically.  Brown  can 
sometimes  thrill  you;  and  Poe  often;  but  when  you  wake 
again  to  normal  placidity,  you  find  in  your  nostrils  some  lin 
gering  trace  of  such  fumes  as  fill  theatres  where  red  lights  have 
been  burning.  In  common  with  Irving  and  Poe,  Hawthorne  "* 
had  an  instinctive  tendency  to  something  like  classic  precision  • 
of  form.  In  common  with  them  he  possessed,  too,  a  constant 
sensitiveness  to  the  mysteries  of  romantic  sentiment ;  but  the 
romanticism  of  Hawthorne  differs  from  that  of  either  Poe  or 
Irving  as  distinctly  as  it  differs  from  that  of  Brockden  Brown. 
In  Hawthorne's  there  is  no  trace  of  artificiality.  Beyond 
|  human  life  he  feels  not  only  the  fact  of  mystery  ;  he  feels 
the  mysteries  which  are  truly  there. 

In  the  mere  fact  of  romantic  temper,  then,  Hawthorne  is 
^broadly  American,  typically  native  to  this  new  world  which  has 
been  so  starved  of  antiquity.  In  the  fact  that  his  romantic 
spirit  is  fundamentally  true  he  proves  individual,  and  more  at 
one  than  our  other  artists  with  the  deepest  spirit  of  his  pecu 
liar  country.  The  darkly  passionate  idealism  of  the  Puritans 
had  involved  a  tendency  towards  conceptions,  which  when 
they  reached  artistic  form  must  be  romantic.  The  phase  of 
mystery  on  which  the  grim  dogmas  of  these  past  generations 
inces^ntly  dwelt  lies  in  the  world-old  facts,  which  nothing 
shallWver  much  abate,  of  evil  and  sin  and  suffering.  Now 


0 


HAWTHORNE  &^    -^433 


Hawthorne  had  passed  so  far  beyond  Puritan  dogma  that  in 
mature  life  he  could  rarely  be  persuaded  to  attend  a  religious 
service.  His  temper,  indeed,  when  not  concerned  with  the 
forms  of  artistic  expression,  was  impatient  of  all  formality. 
Just  as  truly,  however,  as  his  nature  was  that  of  a  born  artist, 
it  could  never  shake  off  the^tejiyiezamental  carnestnesa_oJL 
Puritan.  Throughout  his  work,  then,  he  is  most  characteristic 
when  in  endlessly  varied  form  he  expresses  that  constant, 
haunting  sense  of  ancestral  sin  in  which  his  Puritan  forefathers 
found  endless  warrant  for  their  doctrines  of  depravity  and  of 
eternal  retribution.  With  the  Puritans,  of  course,  this  sense  ^  • 
of  sin  was  a  conviction  of  fact  ;  they  believed  in  the  Devil,  -1 
essential  wickedness,  lurking  within  every  human 
bound  if  we  lack  divine  help  to  sweep  us  into 
cteserved  and  lasting  torment.  Hawthorne,  on  the  other 
hand,  felt  all  this  only  as  a  matter  of  emotional  experience. 
To  him  Puritanism  was  no  longer  a  motive  of  life;  in  final 
ripeness  it  had  become  a  motive  of  art.  When  any  human 
impulse  has  thus  ripened,  we  may  generally  conclude  it  his 
torically  a  thing  of  the  past. 

Another  aspect  of  this  deep  sense  of  sin  and  mystery  shows 
us  that  it  involves  morbid  development  of  conscience.  Con 
science  in  its  artistic  form  Hawthorne  displays  throughout; 
and  though  artistic  conscience  be  very  different  from  moral, 
the  two  have  in  common  an  aspiration  toward  beauty.  For 
all  its  perversities  of  outward  form,  the  impulse  of  the  moral 
conscience  is  really  toward  beauty  of  conduct ;  artistic  con 
science,  often  evident  in  works  morally  far  from  edifying,  is  a 
constant,  strenuous  impulse  toward  beauty  of  expression.  In 
America  this  latter  trait  has  generally  seemed  more  frequent 
than  in  England ;  one  feels  it  even  in  Brockden  Brown,  one 
feels  it  strongly  in  Irving  and  Poe,  one  feels  it  in  the  delicately 
sentimental  lines  of  Bryant,  and  one  feels  it  now  and  again 
through  most  of  the  expression  of  renascent  New  England. 
Whatever  American  writers  have  achieved,  they  have  con- 

28 


434     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

stantly  tried  to  do  their  best.  Hawthorne,  we  have  seen, 
surpassed  his  countrymen  in  the  genuineness  of  his  artistic  im 
pulse  ;  he  surpassed  them,  too,  in  the  tormenting  strenuous- 
ness  of  his  artistic  conscience.  In  his  choice  of  words  and, 
above  all,  in  the  delicacy  of  his  very  subtle  rhythm,  he  seems 
never  to  have  relaxed  his  effort  to  write  as  beautifully  as  he 
could.  He  displays  the  ancestral  conscience  of  New  Eng 
land,  then,  in  finally  exquisite  form. 

Of  course  the  man  has  limits.  Comparing  his  work  with 
the  contemporary  work  of  England,  one  is  aware  of  its  classi- 
Acally  careful  form,  of  its  profoundly  romantic  sentiment,  and 
W)f  its  admirable  artistic  conscience.  One  grows  aware,  at  the 
same  time,  of  its  unmistakable  rusticity ;  in  turns  of  th^ght 
as  well  as  of  phrase  one  feels  monotony,  provincialism,^P?er- 
tain  thinness.  Throughout,  one  feels  again  that  tendency  t* 
shrink  from  things  of  the  flesh  which  to  some  foreign  minds 
makes  all  American  writing  seem  either  emasculate  or  hypo 
critical.  It  is  reported  of  Hawthorne,  indeed,  —  who  first  saw 
Europe,  we  should  remember,  when  he  was  nearly  fifty  years 
old,  —  that  he  could  never  reconcile  his  taste  to  the  superbly 

*•  unconscious  nudities  of  masterly  sculpture  and  painting. 
Here  is  an  incalculable  limit ;  and  he  has  plenty  more.  One 
and  all  of  these  limits,  however,  prove,  like  his  merits,  to  be 
deeply  characteristic  of  the  New  England  which  surrounded 
his  life. 

It  is  hard  to  sum  up  the  impression  which  such  a  writer 
makes.     He  was   ideal,  of  course,  in   temper ;  he  was   intro- 

1      spective,  with  all  the  self-searching  instinct  of  his  ancestry ; 

I     he  was  solitary  ;  he  was  permeated  with  a  sense  of  the  mys- 

,  teries  of  life  and  sin  ;  and  by  pondering  over  them  he  tended 
to  exaggerate  them  more  and  more|  In  a  ciozenasrjects,  then, 

•*  he  seem£jt^pic^ll}^£uritan.  His  artistic  conscience,  however, 
as  alert  as  that  of  any  pagan,  impelled  him  constantly  to  real 
ise  in  his  work  those  forms  of  beauty  which  should  most 
beautifmly  embody  the  ideals  of  his  incessantly  creative  imagi- 


HAWTHORNE  435 

nation.  Thus  he  grew  to  be  of  all  our  writers  the  least 
imitative,  the  most  surely  individual.  The  circumstances  of 
his  life  combined  with  the  sensitiveness  of  his  nature  to  make 
his  individuality  indigenous.  Beyond  any  one  else,  then,  he 
expresses  the  deepest  temper  of  that  New  England  race 
which  brought  him  forth,  and  which  now,  at  least  in  the 
phases  we  have  known,  seems  vanishing  from  the  earth. 


u 


<xaj, 


XV 

THE    DECLINE    OF    NEW    ENGLAND 

AMONG  the  numerous  writers  of  the  New  England  Renais 
sance  on  whom  we  have  not  touched  there  were  doubtless 
some  who  wrote  significantly.  The  unconscious  selection  of 
the  public,  however,  has  preferred  those  on  whom  we  have 
consequently  found  it  worth  our  while  to  dwell.  What  is 
more,  little  was  thought  or  said  in  nineteenth-century  New 
England,  and  above  all  little  was  written  there  which  will  not 
fall  under  one  or  another  of  the  heads  which  we  have  con 
sidered.  The  earlier  volumes  of  the  u  Atlantic,"  for  example, 
taken  with  the  "  Dial  "  and  the  "  North  American  Review," 
represent  the  literature  of  this  period  ;  and  although  among  the 
contributors  to  each  you  may  find  persons  whom  we  have 
neglected,  you  will  be  at  pains  to  find  in  any  of  them  traces 
of  any  general  spirit  in  the  air  with  which  our  study  has  not 
now  made  us  reasonably  familiar. 

It  is  hard,  too,  quite  to  realise  that  we  have  been  dealing 
not  with  the  present  but  with  the  past.  The  days  of  the 
Renaissance  are  still  so  recent  that  plenty  of  Bostonians  in 
stinctively  feel  its  most  eminent  figures  to  be  our  contempo 
raries.  As  we  begin  to  ponder  over  the  group  of  our  lately 
vanished  worthies,  however,  the  most  obvious  fact  about  them 
grows  to  seem  that  they  represent  a  kind  of  eminence  which 
no  longer  distinguishes  New  England. 

The  social  history  of  Boston,  one  begins  to  see,  has  been 
exceptional.  Early  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  Cotton 
Mathe^was  born  there.  Living  all  his  life  in  that  remote 
colonial  town,  he  managed,  both  as  a  man  of  science  and  as  a 


THE  DECLINE  437 

busy  theological  writer,  to  win  European  recognition.  Any 
American,  it  is  said,  who  went  abroad  during  Cotton  Mather's 
lifetime,  was  apt  to  be  asked  whether  he  knew  this  one 
American  whose  name  had  strayed  beyond  the  limits  of  his 
country.  Cotton  Mather  died  in  1728,  forty-eight  years 
before  the  Declaration  of  Independence ;  but  he  had  been 
personally  known  to  at  least  one  distinguished  signer  of  that 
document,  Benjamin  Franklin.  Franklin,  of  course,  lived 
little  in  Boston,  and  not  at  all  after  his  early  youth.  During 
the  middle  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  then,  one  may 
perhaps  say  that  Boston,  although  it  contained  men  of  unusual 
intelligence  and  power,  contained  few  if  any  whose  eminence 
was  more  than  locally  visible.  By  the  time  of  the  American 
Revolution,  however,  a  leading  citizen  of  Boston  was  John 
Adams,  whose  reputation  as  a  public  man  ultimately  become 
worldwide;  and  in  the  Boston  of  his  day  Adams's  personality 
was  not  obviously  exceptional.  Though  his  attainment  of  the 
national  presidency  made  him  at  last  more  conspicuous  than 
any  of  his  New  England  contemporaries,  he  was  at  home 
only  one  of  an  able  and  distinguished  company.  President 
Adams  survived  the  Declaration  of  Independence  by  precisely 
half  a  century;  he  died  on  the  4th  of  July,  1826.  At  that 
time  the  Boston  on  which  his  eyes  closed  already  contained 
many  men  not  only  of  power,  but  of  such  eminence  that  at 
one  time  or  another  they  attained  far  more  than  local  recog 
nition.  John  Quincy  Adams,  then  President  of  the  United 
States,  was  a  diplomatist  known  throughout  Europe.  Daniel 
Webster  and  Edward  Everett  were  members  of  Congress 
from  Boston,  George  Ticknor  was  Smith  Professor  at  Har 
vard,  William  Ellery  Channing  was  in  the  very  flood-tide  of 
his  career,  and  young  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  was  just  being 
licensed  to  preach. 

The  name  of  Emerson  carries  us  to  another  literary  epoch. 
In  1879,  Holmes,  in  his  Memoir  of  John  Lothrop  Motley,  wrote 
of  that  Saturday  Club  at  which  we  have  already  glanced  :  — 


438     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

"  This  Club,  of  which  we  were  both  members,  and  which  is  still 
flourishing,  came  into  existence  in  a  very  quiet  sort  of  way  at  about 
the  same  time  as  the  '  Atlantic  Monthly,'  and  although  entirely  un 
connected  with  that  magazine,  included  as  members  some  of  its  chief 
contributor's.  Of  those  who  might  have  been  met  at  some  of  the 
monthly  gatherings  in  its  earlier  days  I  may  mention  Emerson,  Haw 
thorne,  Lowell,  Longfellow,  Motley,  Whipple,  Whittier;  Professors 
Agassiz  and  Peirce  ;  John  S.  D wight;  Governor  Andrew,  Richard  H. 
Dana,  Junior,  Charles  Sumner.  It  offered  a  wide  gamut  of  intelli 
gences,  and  the  meetings  were  noteworthy  occasions.  If  there  was 
not  a  certain  amount  of  '  mutual  admiration  '  among  some  of  those  I 
have  mentioned  it  was  a  great  pity,  and  implied  a  defect  in  the  nature 
of  men  who  were  otherwise  largely  endowed.  The  vitality  of  this 
Club  has  depended  in  a  great  measure  on  its  utter  poverty  in  statutes 
and  by-laws,  its  entire  absence  of  formality,  and  its  blessed  freedom 
from  speech-making." 

In  Mr.  Morse's  biography  of  Holmes  there  is  a  note  refer 
ring  to  this  Club,  in  which  he  mentions  among  its  members 
a  number  of  other  gentlemen  still  living  and  these  among  the 
dead  :  Felton,  once  President  of  Harvard  College ;  Prescott ; 
Tom  Appleton  5  J.  M.  Forbes;  Henry  James,  the  elder; 
William  Hunt,  the  painter ;  Charles  Francis  Adams ;  Francis 
Parkman ;  James  Freeman  Clarke ;  Judge  John  Lowell ; 
Ebenezer  Rockwood  Hoar ;  and  Bishop  Brooks.  Including 
Holmes,  this  gives  us  twenty-six  members  of  the  Club,  all 
typical  Boston  gentlemen  of  the  Renaissance.  Another  mem 
ber,  we  have  already  seen,  was  Fields.  Twenty-seven  names, 
then,  we  have  mentioned  in  all,  so  carelessly  collected  that 
one  so  familiar  as  that  of  Fields  was  accidentally  omitted. 
Among  the  six  least  widely  known  of  the  company,  two  had 
attained  more  than  local  reputation  as  men  of  letters.  Edwin 
Percy  Whipple  was  generally  recognised  as  a  professional 
literary  critic ;  and  if  Mr.  Dana  had  lacked  the  claim  to  emi 
nence  which  his  admirable  career  at  the  bar  deserved,  and  which 
was  deserved  as  well  by  his  high-minded  devotion  to  the  cause 
of  antislavery  at  a  time  when  such  devotion  demanded  rare 
courage,  he  would  still  be  remembered  among  our  lesser  lit 
erary  figures  as  the  writer  of  that  excellent  record  of  sea-life, 


THE  DECLINE  43g 

"  Two  Years  Before  the  Mast."  President  Felton  and  Tom 
Appleton  and  John  Lowell,  on  the  other  hand,  left  behind 
them  little  literary  record ;  whoever  knew  them,  however, 
must  remember  them  as  men  of  such  wit  and  breeding  as 
would  have  been  exceptional  anywhere ;  and  any  memory 
which  embraces  them  will  embrace  too  the  figure  of  Mr. 
Forbes,  a  merchant  of  those  elder  days  when  mercantile 
Boston  had  something  of  the  quality  which  tradition  would 
confine  to  the  old-world  merchants  who  wore  their  swords. 

This  list,  we  must  remember,  is  merely  accidental, — the  list 
of  a  few  men  who  chanced  to  become  fellow-members  of  a 
small,  intimate  Club.  In  the  Boston  where  they  lived  they 
were  not  the  only  men  of  eminence.  Webster  was  their 
fellow-citizen  ;  so  was  Everett ;  so  was  Choate ;  so  were 
Theodore  Parker  and  Wendell  Phillips  ;  so  was  Mr.  Win- 
throp.  The  list  might  extend  indefinitely.  Between  1840 
and  1860,  indeed,  Boston  was  probably  the  spot  in  the  Eng 
lish-speaking  world  where  in  proportion  to  the  population  a 
visitor  was  most  apt  familiarly  to  meet  men  whose  reputa 
tion  had  extended  as  far  as  our  language,  amid  fellow-citizens 
who  seemed  in  all  respects  their  equals. 

In  January,  1893,  tnere  suddenly  died  at  Boston  the  late 
Bishop  of  Massachusetts,  the  youngest  man  whose  name  is  in 
cluded  in  Mr.  Morse's  list  of  the  Saturday  Club.  Phillips 
Brooks,  born  in  1835,  and  graduated  at  Harvard  at  the  age  of 
•  twenty,  was  early  known  throughout  the  English-speaking 
world  as  among  the  few  great  preachers  of  his  day.  Cotton 
Mather  had  reached  his  full  maturity  in  1700;  in  1875 
Phillips  Brooks  was  at  the  height  of  his  powers  ;  and  it  is 
hardly  too  much  to  say  that  throughout  those  hundred  and 
seventy-five  years  Boston  had  bred  or  had  attracted  to  itself 
a  succession  of  undeniably  eminent  men.  To-day  there  has 
come  a  marked  change.  The  city  still  possesses  men  of 
power,  of  breeding,  of  culture.  Even  a  critic  so  little  dis 
posed  to  commendation  as  Mr.  Godkin  has  lately  mentioned 


V/ 


440     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Boston  as  the  one  place  in  America  where  wealth  and  the 
knowledge  of  how  to  use  it  are  apt  to  coincide.  Just  as 
surely,  however,  as  the  Boston  of  1850  was  surprisingly  rich 
in  men  of  wide  distinction,  so  the  Boston  of  1900  seems 
comparatively  poor. 

Though  this  decline  in  the  importance  of  Boston  cannot 
yet  be  thoroughly  accounted  for,  two  or  three  facts  about  it 
are  obvious.  For  one  thing,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the 
intellectual  Renaissance  of  New  England  coincided  with  its 
period  of  commercial  prosperity ;  this  began  with  foreign  com 
merce,  and  soon  passed  into  local  manufactures  and  local  rail 
ways.  During  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  then, 
Boston  was  apparently  the  most  prosperous  city  in  America. 
Throughout  this  period,  however,  the  prosperity  of  Boston 
never  crystallised  in  what  nowadays  would  be  considered  large 
fortunes.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  Civil  War,  indeed,  a  Bosto- 
nian  worth  a  million  dollars  was  still  held  extremely  rich. 
The  great  West,  meanwhile,  was  untamed  prairie  and  wilder 
ness. 

The  intellectual  hegemony  of  Boston  may  roughly  be  said 
to  have  lasted  until  the  Civil  War.  That  great  national  con 
vulsion  affected  the  Northern  States  somewhat  as  an  electric 
current  affects  temporarily  isolated  chemicals ;  it  flashed  the 
Union  into  new  cohesion.  The  wildest  imagination  of  1860 
could  hardly  have  conceived  such  centralised  national  power 
as  in  1900  has  become  commonplace  to  American  thought. . 
One  price  which  every  separate  region  must  pay  for  such 
national  union  is  a  decline  of  local  importance.  New  Eng 
land  has  never  lost  its  integrity,  but  since  the  Civil  War  New 
England  has  counted  for  less  and  less. 

A  few  years  after  the  Civil  War  the  Pacific  Railway  was 
at  last  completed.  Long  before  this,  an  extreme  application  of 
the  policy  of  protection  —  a  policy  still  strongly  supported  by  the 
manufacturing  interests  of  New  England  —  had  resulted  in  the 
disappearance  of  our  foreign  commerce.  The  opening  of  the 


THE  DECLINE  441 

continental  transportation  lines  naturally  stimulated  that  already 
great  development  of  wheat-growing  and  the  like  which  now 
makes  our  western  prairies  perhaps  the  chief  grain-producing 
region  of  the  world.  Coal,  and  oil,  too,  and  copper,  and  iron 
began  to  sprout  like  weeds.  The  centre  of  economic  import 
ance  in  America  inevitably  shifted  westward.  Meantime 
legislation  had  deprived  New  England  of  that  mercantile 
marine  which  might  conceivably  have  maintained  its  import 
ance  in  international  trade. 

Again,  the  immense  development  of  Western  wealth,  dur 
ing  the  past  thirty  or  forty  years,  has  resulted  in  private  for 
tunes  whose  mere  bulk  is  incredible.  Though  the  fortunes 
of  wealthy  New  Englanders  have  undoubtedly  increased,  they 
have  increased  in  nothing  like  proportion  with  the  fortunes  of 
the  West.  Such  a  state  of  economic  fact  could  not 
fail,  at  least  for  a  while,  to  bring  about  a  marked  change  in 
American  ideals.  The  immigrant  clergy  of  New  England 
held  such  local  power  as  involves  personal  eminence  ;  such 
power  later  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  bar;  and  during 
our  Renaissance,  literature  itself  carried  with  it  influence 
enough  to  make  great  personal  eminence  its  most  stimulating 
prize.  To-day,  for  better  or  worse,  power  and  eminence 
throughout  America  have  momentarily  become  questions 
rather  of  material  fortune. 

External  causes,  then,  would  perhaps  have  brought  to  an 
end  the  eminence  of  New  England ;  but  we  can  see  now  as 
well  that  in  the  form  which  our  Renaissance  took  there  was 
something  which  must  have  prevented  it  from  lasting  long. 
As  we  look  back  on  it  now,  its  most  characteristic  phase 
appears  to  have  been  that  which  began  with  Unitarianism, 
passed  into  Transcendentalism,  and  broke  out  into  militant 
reform.  All  three  of  these  movements,  or,  if  you  prefer,  all 
these  three  phases  of  one  considerable  movement,  were  based 
on  the  fundamental  conception  that  human  beings  are  inher 
ently  good.  This  naturally  involved  the  right  of  every  individ- 


442     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

ual  to  think  and  to  act  as  he  chose.  Free  exercise  of  this 
right  for  a  while  seemed  to  uphold  the  buoyant  philosophy 
on  which  it  was  based.  So  long  as  human  beings  were  con 
trolled  by  the  discipline  of  tradition,  their  vagaries  were  not 
so  wild  as  to  seem  socially  disintegrating ;  but  before  long, 
excessive  individualism  began  evidently  to  involve  the  neglect 
and  decay  of  standards. 

The  most  typical  example  of  the  whole  tendency  is  prob 
ably  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  Unitarianism.  Fifty  years 
ago  this  was  certainly  the  dominant  religious  fact  in  Boston ; 
and  the  Unitarian  ministers  of  the  city  were  men  of  such 
vigorous  and  distinguished  personality,  of  such  ethereal  moral 
purity,  too,  as  made  them  seem  the  fit  spiritual  leaders  of  a 
society  remarkable  for  personal  distinction.  To-day  this  elder 
Unitarianism  has  tended  either  to  recoil  into  the  Episcopal 
Church,  or  else  to  dissipate  itself  in  the  reformatory  vagaries 
of  free-thinking  pulpits.  The  tenants  of  these,  frequently 
foreigners,  have  often  been  admirable  persons  whose  origin  and 
manners  have  perceptibly  differed  from  those  of  their  distin 
guished  predecessors,  More  than  one  of  the  old  Boston 
churches  have  meanwhile  passed  out  of  existence.  The 
Brattle  Street  Church,  which  began  its  career  of  liberal  Cal 
vinism,  under  Benjamin  Coleman,  in  the  days  of  William  and 
Mary,  has  totally  disappeared  ;  so  has  the  Hollis  Street  Church, 
memorable  as  that  of  "  the  celebrated  Mather  Byles  ;  "  so  has 
the  West  Church,  where  the  father  of  James  Russell  Lowell 
used  to  preach ;  so  have  more  still.  Nor  is  this  wilting 
shrinkage  merely  a  question  of  bricks  and  mortar.  For  a 
century  and  a  half,  until  the  dawn  of  Unitarianism,  the  pul 
pits  of  Boston  were  incessantly  occupied  by  the  most  distin 
guished  and  powerful  men  of  New  England;  to-day,  after 
less  than  a  hundred  years  of  the  work  begun  by  Channing, 
the  Boston  pulpit,  whatever  the  individual  merits  of  its  clergy, 
has  locally  become  the  least  conspicuous  and  the  least  influen 
tial  in  America. 


THE  DECLINE 


443 


Along  with  this  impressive  change  in  New  England  has 
come  another.  Towards  the  end  of  his  life,  Bishop  Brooks 
chanced  to  be  privately  talking  of  the  difference  between  the 
Harvard  College  of  his  boyhood  and  the  Harvard  College  to 
which,  under  the  enfranchised  system  of  non-sectarian  religion 
which  now  prevails  there,  he  was  an  official  preacher.  "  In 
my  time,"  he  said,  "  Harvard  students  had  poets ;  now  they 
have  n't."  The  truth  is,  one  begins  to  see,  that  the  old 
poets,  whom  the  young  Yankees  used  so  enthusiastically  to 
read,  phrased  one  single  old  ideal,  —  that  spirit  of  revolution 
whose  aim  is  individual  freedom.  Intellectually  and  spirit 
ually,  that  ideal  has  now  come  as  near  realisation  as  is  ever 
the  case  on  earth.  Boston  men,  at  present  of  mature  years, 
have  grown  up  in  a  generation  whose  individual  freedom  was 
ready  to  be  used  and  enjoyed.  Born  under  the  influences  for 
which  the  preceding  generation  had  fought,  then,  this  new 
generation  has  generally  been  content  to  cherish  each  his 
own  individual  ideal,  which  has  usually  been  too  individual 
to  excite  common  enthusiasm. 

An  unremarked  accident  in  merely  literary  history  has  mean 
while  had  perceptible  effect  on  New  England.  The  men  who 
started  the  "  North  American  Review,"  the  later  men  who  for 
a  while  expressed  themselves  in  the  "  Dial,"  and  later  still  the 
men  whose  work  was  finally  concentrated  in  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly  "  had  one  point  in  common,  which  they  shared  with 
the  orators,  the  scholars,  and  the  Unitarians  who  flourished 
along  with  them.  Almost  all  these  men  either  had  been  edu 
cated  at  Harvard  College  or  else  had  early  come  under  the 
influences  of  that  oldest  seat  of  American  learning.  How 
deeply  coherent  the  Harvard  spirit  has  always  been  may  be  felt 
by  whoever  will  read  that  long  series  of  occasional  poems  in 
which  Dr.  Holmes  celebrated  the  history  of  the  college  and  of 
the  class  of  '29.  Until  Mr.  Fields  became  editor  of  the 
"Atlantic  Monthly,"  then,  the  chief  vehicles  of  literary 
expression  in  New  England  were  controlled  by  men  in  whom 


444     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

this  Harvard  tradition  was  inbred.  Though  not  a  college  man, 
Mr.  Fields  was  in  close  and  intimate  sympathy  with  the  col 
lege  men  of  his  day.  The  gentlemen  who  succeeded  him  in 
control  of  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  are  still  living,  are  eminent 
in  contemporary  letters,  and  are  worthily  respected  and  admired 
by  whoever  knows  them  either  personally  or  as  authors. 
Neither  of  them,  however,  had  chanced  to  have  much  to  do 
with  Harvard  ;  nor  had  either,  during  his  days  of  editorship, 
instinctive  sympathy  with  Harvard  character.  For  years,  then, 
the  New  England  youth  who  came  to  Harvard  with  literary 
aspiration  found  themselves  at  odds  with  the  conscientious  and 
admirable  men  of  letters  who  controlled  the  chief  organ  of 
New  England  literature.  The  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  ceased 
to  understand  the  constituency  from  which  its  older  contribu 
tors  had  been  drawn ;  and  Harvard  College  ceased  perceptibly 
to  affect  the  literature  of  New  England. 

The  college  itself  was  somewhat  to  blame.  The  spirit  of 
individualism  had  more  than  done  its  work  there.  On  the 
opening  page  of  the  "  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table " 
Holmes  launches  into  a  characteristically  whimsical  and  wise 
discussion  of  societies  of  mutual  admiration  :  — 

"  What  would  our  literature  or  art  be  without  such  associations  ? 
Who  can  tell  what  we  owe  to  the  Mutual  Admiration  Society  of  which 
Shakspere,  and  Ben  Jonson,  and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  were  mem 
bers  ?  Or  to  that  where  Johnson,  and  Goldsmith,  and  Burke,  and 
Reynolds,  and  Beauclerk,  and  Boswell,  most  admiring  among  all 
admirers,  met  together?  Was  there  any  great  harm  in  the  fact  that 
the  Irvings  and  Pauldings  wrote  in  company  ?  or  any  unpardonable 
cabal  in  the  literary  union  of  Verplanck  and  Bryant  and  Sands,  and  as 
many  more  as  they  chose  to  associate  with  them  ? " 

Whatever  its  disintegrant  tendencies,  the  society  of  the  Boston 
Renaissance  was  full  of  mutual  admiration ;  and  the  Saturday 
Club,  in  which  the  social  side  of  Boston  literature  culminated, 
was  a  Mutual  Admiration  Society  of  the  most  stimulating 
kind.  The  extreme  individualism  of  the  later  generation  has 
made  such  mutual  admiration  seem  incompatible  with  honest 


THE  DECLINE  445 

criticism.  The  younger  men  of  Harvard  have  not  only  lacked 
common  ideals;  they  have  so  far  parted  one  from  another 
that  they  have  been  honestly  unable  to  perceive  what  virtues 
they  may  have  possessed  in  common  as  distinguished  from 
what  faults  an  overdeveloped  critical  perception  has  revealed 
to  each  in  the  temper  and  the  work  of  the  others. 

And  so  the  Renaissance  of  New  England  has  declined. 
At  least  for  the  moment  literary  New  England  is  a  thing 
of  the  past.  What  the  future  may  bring,  no  man  can  say  ; 
but  we  are  already  far  enough  from  the  New  England  which 
was  considerable  in  letters  to  ask  what  it  has  contributed 
to  human  expression. 

Not  much,  we  must  answer,  on  any  large  scale  ;  of  the 
men  we  have  scrutinised  only  two,  Emerson  and  Hawthorne, 
will  generally  be  held  considerably  to  have  enriched  the  litera 
ture  of  our  language.  And  Emerson  has  vagaries  which  may 
well  justify  a  doubt  whether  his  work  is  among  those  few  final 
records  of  human  wisdom  which  are  imperishable  Scriptures. 
Beyond  doubt,  again,  though  Hawthorne's  tales  possess  sin 
cerity  of  motive  and  beauty  of  form,  they  reveal  at  best  a 
phase  of  human  nature  whose  limits  are  obvious.  Mutual 
admiration  has  combined  with  such  limits  to  make  New  Eng 
land  overestimate  itself;  and  for  want  of  anything  better  to 
brag  about,  all  America  has  bragged  about  the  letters  of  New 
England,  until  in  reactionary  moods  one  begins  to  smile  at  the 
brag.  As  we  look  back  at  the  Renaissance  now  vanishing  into 
the  past,  however,  we  find  in  it,  if  not  positive  magnitude  of 
achievement,  at  least  qualities  which  go  far  to  warrant  this 
national  pride  which  we  have  loved  to  believe  justified.  For 
in  every  aspect  its  literature  is  sincere  and  pure  and  sweet. 

The  emigrants  to  New  England  were  native  Elizabethans, 
—  stern  and  peculiar,  but  still  temperamentally  contemporary 
with  Shakspere  and  the  rest.  In  two  centuries  and  a  half, 
national  experience  forced  English  life  and  letters  through 
many  various  phases,  until  at  last  the  old  country  began  to 


446     THE  RENAISSANCE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

breed  that  fixed,  conservative  John  Bull  who  has  so  lost 
Elizabethan  spontaneity,  versatility,  and  enthusiasm.  In 
America,  meantime,  national  inexperience  kept  the  elder 
temper  little  changed  until  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  it  was  aroused  by  the  world-movement  of  revolu 
tion.  Then,  at  last,  our  ancestral  America,  which  had  so  un 
wittingly  lingered  behind  the  mother  country,  awoke.  In  the 
flush  of  its  waking,  it  strove  to  express  the  meaning  of  life ; 
and  the  meaning  of  its  life  was  the  story  of  what  two  hundred 
years  of  national  inexperience  had  wrought  for  a  race  of 
Elizabethan  Puritans.  Its  utterances  may  well  prove  lacking 
in  scope,  in  greatness ;  the  days  to  come  may  well  prove 
them  of  little  lasting  potence ;  but  nothing  can  obscure  their 
beautiful  purity  of  spirit. 

For  all  its  inexperience,  New  England  life  has  been  human. 
Its  literal  records  are  no  more  free  than  those  of  other  regions 
and  times  from  the  greed  and  the  lust,  the  trickery  and  the 
squalor,  which  everywhere  defile  earthly  existence.  What 
marks  it  apart  is  the  childlike  persistency  of  its  ideals.  Its 
nobler  minds,  who  have  left  their  records  in  its  literature, 
retained  something  of  the  old  spontaneity,  the  old  versatility, 
the  old  enthusiasm  of  ancestral  England.  They  retained, 
too,  even  more  than  they  knew  of  that  ardour  for  absolute 
truth  which  animated  the  grave  fathers  of  the  emigration. 
Their  innocence  of  worldly  wisdom  led  them  to  undue  con 
fidence  in  the  excellence  of  human  nature ;  the  simplicity  of 
their  national  past  blinded  them  to  the  complexity  of  the  days 
even  now  at  hand,  while  the  sod  still  lies  light  on  their  graves. 
We  used  to  believe  them  heralds  of  the  future ;  already  we 
begin  to  perceive  that  they  were  rather  chroniclers  of  times 
which  shall  be  no  more.  Yet,  after  all,  whatever  comes,  they 
possessed  traits  for  which  we  may  always  give  them  unstinted 
reverence ;  for  humanity  must  always  find  inspiring  the  record 
of  bravely  confident  aspiration  toward  righteousness. 


BOOK     VI 
THE   REST   OF   THE   STORY 


BOOK    VI 

THE    REST   OF   THE   STORY 
I 

NEW    YORK    SINCE    1857 

LONG  as  we  have  dwelt  on  the  Renaissance  of  New  England, 
we  can  hardly  have  forgotten  that  the  first  considerable 
American  literary  expression  developed  in  the  Middle  States. 
Before  New  England  emerged  into  literature,  the  work  of 
Brockden  Brown  had  been  completed  and  the  reputations 
of  Irving  and  Cooper  and  Bryant  established.  Bryant,  as 
we  have  seen,  lived  through  the  whole  period  which  brought 
New  England  letters  to  their  height  and  to  their  decline. 
He  outlived  Poe,  he  outlived  Willis,  and  long  before  he  died 
the  Knickerbocker  School  had  passed  into  a  memory.  Mean 
while  those  writers  whose  works  had  centred  about  the 
"  Atlantic  Monthly  "  had  achieved  their  full  reputation. 

The  "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  we  remember,  was  started  in 
1857.  That  same  year  saw  also  the  foundation  of  "Harper's 
Weekly,"  which  still  admirably  persists  in  New  York. 
At  that  time  "  Harper's  Monthly  Magazine "  had  been  in 
existence  for  seven  years ;  and  the  two  New  York  newspapers 
which  have  maintained  closest  relation  with  literary  matters, 
the  "  Evening  Post "  and  the  "  Tribune,"  had  long  been 
thoroughly  established.  The  other  periodicals  which  now 
mark  New  York  as  the  literary  centre  of  the  United  States 
were  not  yet  founded.  In  reverting  to  New  York,  then, 
we  may  conveniently  revert  to  1857. 

29 


450  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

Though  the  fact  by  which  this  year  is  commonly  remem 
bered  in  American  history  has  left  no  mark  on  literature,  we 
may  conveniently  remind  ourselves  that  throughout  America 
1857  was  marked  by  a  memorable  financial  panic.  The 
great  expansion  of  the  country  during  the  preceding  twelve 
or  fifteen  years  had  resulted  in  a  general  extension  of  credit 
and  in  a  general  overdevelopment  of  enterprises,  particularly 
of  railroads,  which  were  bound  to  involve  reaction.  For 
a  little  while  the  material  progress  of  the  country  came  to  a 
standstill.  It  was  only  when  this  material  progress  was  re 
newed,  partly  under  the  stimulus  of  the  Civil  War,  that  the 
overwhelming  superiority  of  New  York  as  a  centre  of  material 
prosperity  made  itself  finally  felt.  Throughout  the  century, 
to  be  sure,  the  preponderance  of  New  York  had  been  declar 
ing  itself.  In  1800  it  had  60,000  inhabitants  to  only  24,000 
in  Boston.  In  1830,  when  it  had  200,000  inhabitants, 
Boston  had  only  61,000;  and  by  1857  tne  population  of 
New  York  was  at  least  three-quarters  of  a  million,  while  that 
of  Boston  still  proportionally  lagged  behind.  From  the  time 
when  the  Erie  Canal  was  opened,  in  fact,  the  geographical 
position  of  New  York  had  already  made  that  city  by  far  the 
most  considerable  in  America.  Less  than  three  hundred 
miles  from  Boston,  it  was  and  it  remains  geographically  as 
central  as  Boston  is  isolated. 

Until  after  the  Civil  War,  however,  the  preponderating 
importance  of  New  York  had  not  proceeded  so  far  as  to 
deprive  the  place  of  a  decided  local  character.  Traces  of 
this,  indeed,  it  still  retains ;  but  most  of  its  modern  character 
istics  seem  traceable  to  a  political  accident.  Throughout  the 
period  during  which  its  geographical  position,  at  first  slowly, 
then  faster  and  faster,  has  declared  its  commercial  superiority, 
New  York  has  never  been  a  political  capital.  In  this  respect 
its  contrast  with  Boston  is  most  marked.  Though  Boston 
has  been  the  capital  only  of  the  small  State  of  Massachusetts, 
this  small  State  has  always  been  the  most  important  of 


NEW  YORK  SINCE  1857  451 

isolated  New  England.  Boston,  then,  its  political  capital, 
has  enjoyed  not  only  the  commercial  and  economic  supremacy 
of  the  region,  but  also  such  supremacy  as  comes  from  attract 
ing  and  diffusing  the  most  important  influences  of  local  public 
life.  In  this  aspect  Boston  on  a  small  scale  resembles  the 
great  capitals  of  the  world.  New  York,  on  the  other  hand, 
commercially  and  financially  the  most  important  spot  in 
America,  has  never  been  much  else.  Almost  from  the 
beginning  our  national  government  has  been  centralised  in 
Washington,  —  a  city  artificially  created  for  political  pur 
poses  at  a  point  of  small  economic  importance.  The  gov 
ernment  of  the  State  of  New  York,  ever  since  New  York 
was  a  State,  has  been  situated  at  the  comparatively  insignifi 
cant  town  of  Albany.  The  enormous  growth  of  New  York 
City,  to  be  sure,  has  long  given  it  great  political  weight.  In 
current  political  slang  there  are  few  more  picturesque  phrases 
than  that  which  describes  some  candidate  for  the  Presi 
dency  of  the  United  States  as  coming  down  to  the  Harlem 
River  with  a  considerable  majority,  to  be  met  at  that  traditional 
boundary  of  the  metropolis  by  an  overwhelming  force  of 
metropolitan  voters.  In  point  of  fact,  however,  metropolitan 
New  York  has  always  had  to  seek  legislation  from  a  much 
smaller  city  more  than  a  hundred  miles  away ;  and  thither  it 
has  always  had  to  take  for  decision  every  question  carried  to 
its  court  of  highest  appeal.  Two  natural  results  which  have 
followed  may  be  paralleled  in  various  other  American  cities 
similarly  placed,  —  Philadelphia,  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  or  San 
Francisco.  In  the  absence  of  far-reaching  political  activity, 
emphasis  on  merely  local  politics  has  been  disproportionate ; 
and  meanwhile  the  city,  which  has  prospered  only  from  such 
preponderatingly  material  causes,  has  appeared  excessively 
material  in  general  character. 

Throughout  this  century  of  material  development,  then, 
New  York  has  lacked  some  of  those  advantages  which  make 
a  true  capital  intellectually  stimulating.  Its  extraordinary 


452  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

growth  has  nevertheless  brought  into  being  there  something 
more  like  metropolitan  life  than  has  yet  existed  elsewhere  in 
America.  Any  one  whose  memory  of  New  York  extends 
back  for  thirty  years  can  personally  recall  changes  there  which 
prove  by  no  means  superficial. 

The  New  York  of  the  '6o's  was  little  changed  from 
that  of  1857  ;  vou  fek  tnere  traces  of  old  local  character 
quite  as  marked  as  you  would  feel  to-day  in  Boston  or 
Philadelphia.  How  the  New  York  of  to-day  might  present 
itself  to  a  European,  one  can  hardly  say.  To  any  American 
the  change  has  become  something  more  than  the  growth  of 
the  old  Dutch  and  English  town  into  that  endless  extent  of 
towering  commercial  buildings,  of  palaces,  and  of  slums, 
which  now  begins  to  count  its  population  by  the  million. 
What  the  visitor  from  New  England  most  feels  in  modern 
New  York  is  its  metropolitan  character.  In  many  aspects, 
of  course,  the  city  remains  American  ;  in  many  others  it 
seems  chiefly  a  great  centre  of  world-life.  Nowhere  before 
on  this  continent  have  human  beings  and  human  energy  so 
concentrated  ;  never  before  has  life  become  so  little  local,  so 
broadly  general.  With  all  its  differences  from  the  great  cities 
of  the  old  world,  you  begin  to  feel  that  to-day  it  has  more 
in  common  with  London  and  Paris,  with  Vienna  and  Berlin, 
with  old  Rome  and  Babylon,  and  all  the  rest,  than  with 
ancestral  America. 

Very  material  this  development,  of  course  ;  and  from  the 
accident  that  New  York  is  not  a  true  capital,  its  materialism 
has  been  more  and  more  emphasised.  On  such  a  scale  as  this 
however,  material  development  cannot  help  involving  intellec 
tual  activity.  In  world-centres  life  becomes  more  and  more 
strenuous.  The  problems  before  individuals  grow  more  com 
plicated,  the  rewards  larger.  The  scale  of  everything  in 
creases.  If  you  have  things  to  sell,  there  you  can  find  most 
buyers  ;  if  you  would  buy  things,  there  you  can  find  most  who 
have  things  to  sell.  So  if  as  an  artist  you  have  things  that 


NEW  YORK  SINCE  1857  453 

you  would  impart  to  other  men,  there  you  can  surely  find  the 
greatest  number  of  men  to  whom  they  may  be  imparted.  If 
by  chance  what  you  do  in  such  a  place  is  worth  doing,  its 
effect  will  be  wider  and  greater  than  anything  done  amid  the 
smaller,  less  disturbing  influences  of  isolation.  While  New 
York  has  been  developing  its  material  prosperity,  then,  it  has 
also  been  developing  higher  life.  From  the  moment  when 
the  Renaissance  of  New  England  began  to  decline,  New  York 
has  more  and  more  certainly  been  growing  into  the  intellec 
tual  and  artistic  centre  of  America. 

For  many  years  our  principal  publishers  have  been  centred 
there  j  so  have  the  periodicals  which  are  most  generally  read 
throughout  the  country.  There  is  u  Harper's  Magazine," 
which  dates  from  1850;  "Harper's  Weekly,"  which  dates 
from  1857  >  tne  "  Century  Magazine,"  founded  as  "Scribner's 
Monthly"  in  1870,  and  translated  to  its  present  name  in  1881  ; 
"Scribner's  Magazine,"  founded  in  1887;  and  more.  Some 
twenty  years  ago  the  old  "North  American  Review"  was  bought 
by  New  York  people  and  its  title  transferred  there  to  a  peri 
odical  of  less  staid  character  than  the  conventional  old  quarterly 
so  dear  to  New  England  tradition.  In  New  York,  too,  there 
has  been  published  since  1865  the  chief  American  weekly 
paper  which  has  seriously  discussed  public  and  literary  affairs, 
"  The  Nation ; "  and  there  are  comic  weeklies  as  well,  — 
"  Puck  "  and  "  Life,"  and  more.  The  list  might  go  on  end 
lessly  ;  but  for  our  purposes  this  is  enough.  The  extent  of 
literary  activity  involved  in  such  production  is  incalculably 
greater  than  New  England  ever  dreamed  of. 

All  the  same,  this  activity  has  been  distinguished  from  the 
literary  activity  of  renascent  New  England  in  two  rather 
marked  ways.  The  first  is  that,  in  spite  of  its  magnitude,  it  is 
less  conspicuous  in  New  York  than  the  old  "  North  American 
Review  "  or  even  the  "  Dial,"  and  still  more  than  the  earlier 
volumes  of  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly  "  were  in  their  contempo 
rary  Boston.  As  one  looks  back  at  Boston  between  1800  and 


454  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

1864,  one  inclines  to  feel  that  its  intellectual  life  was  rather 
more  important  than  its  material,  and  that  even  on  the  spot 
this  intellectual  importance  was  appreciated.  In  New  York, 
however  important  our  contemporary  literary  expression,  mate 
rial  activity  is  more  important  still.  The  second  way  in  which 
literary  New  York  may  be  distinguished  from  our  elder  literary 
Boston  results  from  the  first ;  it  was  typified  by  an  incident  at  a 
New  York  dinner-party  eight  or  ten  years  ago.  A  Bostonian, 
in  some  small  degree  a  man  of  letters,  was  invited  to  meet  a 
company  of  literary  New  Yorkers.  In  the  course  of  conver 
sation  one  of  the  company  happened  casually  to  mention  that 
he  was  in  editorial  charge  of  a  well-known  magazine.  The 
visitor  from  New  England  laughingly  confessed  that  he  had  no 
idea  that  his  neighbour  held  so  distinguished  an  office.  This 
provincial  ignorance  so  amused  the  company  that  they  pro 
ceeded  to  ask  their  visitor  to  name  the  editors  of  the  familiar 
periodicals  on  which  we  have  already  touched,  —  "  Harper's 
Magazine,"  "  Harper's  Weekly,"  the  "  Century  Magazine," 
"  Scribner's  Magazine,"  and  the  rest.  The  Bostonian,  who 
knew  all  these  publications  perfectly  well,  had  never  known 
who  conducted  any  of  them.  The  only  New  York  editorial 
fact  about  which  he  was  certain  was  that  Mr.  Godkin  had 
something  to  do  with  the  "  Nation."  Though  such  ignorance 
was  by  no  means  to  the  credit  of  the  Bostonian,  it  clearly  in 
dicates  a  truth  concerning  contemporary  letters  in  New  York. 
To  a  degree  previously  unprecedented  in  America,  they  have 
become  impersonal.  You  know  the  names  of  publishers,  you 
know  the  names  of  magazines,  but  in  general  you  have  misty 
notions  of  who  is  writing. 

Yet  New  York  has  not  lacked  literary  worthies.  At  vari 
ous  times,  for  example,  while  considering  the  literature  of  New 
England,  we  have  had  occasion  to  notice  Horace  Greeley,  the 
founder  of  the  "  New  York  Tribune."  Not  precisely  a  man 
of  letters,  unless  within  the  range  of  letters  you  include  regular 
journalism,  Greeley  had  marked  influence  on  literature  in  New 


NEW   YORK  SINCE  1857  455 

York.  A  country  boy  from  New  Hampshire,  a  printer  by 
trade,  he  arrived  there,  carrying  all  his  worldly  goods  in  a  bundle, 
during  the  month  of  August,  1831.  After  various  journalistic 
experiments,  he  established  the  u  Tribune  "  just  ten  years  later ; 
from  that  time  on  he  was  more  and  more  recognised  as  a  re 
markably  individual  journalist.  He  was  a  somewhat  grotesque 
combination  of  simplicity  and  shrewdness,  thoroughly  honest 
and  sincerely  devoted  to  all  manner  of  reform.  Naturally, 
then,  he  warmly  sympathised  with  many  of  the  New  England 
men  at  whom  we  have  glanced.  At  one  time  or  another  he 
invited  their  co-operation  with  the  "  Tribune  ;  "  his  influence 
brought  to  New  York  a  number  of  memorable  literary  people. 
Charles  Anderson  Dana  passed  by  way  of  the  u  Tribune  "  from 
Brook  Farm  to  the  "  New  York  Sun  ; "  and  George  William 
Curtis  wrote  long  for  the  u  Tribune  "  before  he  finally  became 
associated  with  the  periodicals  of  the  Harpers.  For  a  year  or 
two  Margaret  Fuller  was  in  charge  of  the  "Tribune's"  literary 
criticism ;  she  was  followed  by  George  Ripley,  who  continued 
the  work  all  his  life.  Nor  did  the  "  Tribune  "  draw  its  literary 
strength  only  from  New  England.  Henry  Jarvis  Raymond, 
founder  of  the  New  York  "  Times,"  was  previously  an  assis 
tant  editor  of  the  elder  newspaper.  The  list  of  familiar  names 
might  extend  indefinitely.  However  long  or  short,  it  would 
certainly  include  the  name  of  Bayard  Taylor,  whose  career 
fairly  represents  the  condition  of  New  York  letters  during  the 
period  now  under  consideration. 

Bayard  Taylor  was  a  Pennsylvanian,  born  of  Quaker  par 
entage  in  1825.  He  had  only  a  common-school  education, 
but  he  loved  literature,  and  by  the  time  he  was  sixteen  years 
old  he  was  publishing  poems  in  local  newspapers.  At  nineteen 
he  had  attracted  the  attention  of  Mr.  Griswold,  whose  "  Poets 
of  America  "  and  the  like  were  once  the  chief  American  an 
thologies  ;  and,  besides,  he  had  been  associated  with  Greeley  in 
one  of  the  journalistic  ventures  which  preceded  the  successful 
"Tribune."  So,  in  1844,  Taylor  brought  out  a  volume  of 


456  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

poems ;  and  in  the  same  year  he  was  commissioned  by  the 
"  Tribune  "  to  go  abroad  and  write  home  letters  of  travel. 
He  spent  two  years  in  strolling  through  Europe  on  foot. 
The  records  of  this  journey  began  those  books  of  travel  which 
he  continued  publishing  for  thirty  years.  Meanwhile  he  gave 
lectures,  wrote  for  the  "  Tribune,"  brought  out  many  volumes 
of  poems  and  novels,  and  in  1871  published  a  translation  of 
Goethe's  "  Faust  "  in  the  original  metres.  An  elaborate  life 
of  Goethe,  which  he  had  planned,  was  fatally  prevented. 
Appointed  Minister  to  Germany  by  President  Hayes,  he  died 
soon  after  his  arrival  at  Berlin,  in  December,  1878. 

Early  in  middle  life  Bayard  Taylor  had  unquestionably  at 
tained  such  literary  eminence  as  is  involved  in  having  one's 
name  generally  known.  The  limits  of  this  eminence,  however, 
appeared  even  while  he  was  alive ;  if  you  asked  people  what 
he  had  written,  the  chances  were  that  they  could  not  tell. 
He  was  a  traveller,  of  course,  and  they  either  artlessly  admired 
the  fact  that  he  had  visited  almost  every  accessible  country, 
or  else  recalled  the  unkind  epigram  that  Bayard  Taylor  had 
travelled  more  and  seen  less  than  anybody  else  on  earth.  This 
ill-natured  criticism  had  the  sting  of  partial  truth.  Taylor's 
accounts  of  his  journeyings  are  just  about  as  instructive  and 
amusing  as  those  lectures  illustrated  by  stereopticon  views  which 
have  supplanted  the  earlier  traditions  of  Yankee  Lyceums.  He 
was  enthusiastic  and  untiring,  but  he  was  not  a  keen  observer. 
Flourishing  rather  before  the  days  of  guide-books,  he  saw  per 
ceptibly  less  than  he  would  have  seen  if  in  possession  of  a  modern 
Baedeker,  and  he  remarked  nothing  whatever  to  which  Bae 
deker  would  not  have  called  his  starred  attention.  He  pre 
served,  however,  an  enthusiastic  simplicity  of  unspoiled  feeling 
which  proved  very  sympathetic  to  the  middle  classes  of  America. 
So  his  books  of  travel  stimulated  sluggish,  untrained  imagina 
tions,  and  at  worst  only  bored  people  of  more  gifts  or  training. 

These  were  his  best-known  writings.  To  him,  however, 
they  probably  appeared  little  better  than  hackwork,  —  things 


NEW  YORK  SINCE  1857  457 

which  he  was  compelled  to  manufacture  for  self-support. 
His  ambition  was  to  make  a  great  poem.  In  view  of  this 
there  is  something  pathetic  in  the  list  of  forgotten  titles  which 
he  has  left  us :  u  Ximena,"  his  first  volume,  was  published  in 
1841  ;  and  after  1870,  during  the  last  six  years  of  his  busy 
life,  he  produced  the  "  Masque  of  the  Gods,"  and  "  Lars,"  and 
the  "  Prophet,"  and  the  "  National  Ode,"  and  "  Prince 
Deukalion."  Here  is  a  passage  from  the  opening  scene  of 
that  dreary  drama,  where  an  awakening  shepherd  hears  a  chorus 
of  nymphs  interrupted  by  underground  voices :  — 

"NYMPHS. 

"  We  wait  in  the  breezes, 
We  hide  in  the  vapours, 
And  linger  in  echoes, 
Awaiting  recall. 

"  VOICES. 
"  The  word  is  spoken,  let  the  judgment  fall! 

"  NYMPHS. 

"  The  heart  of  the  lover, 
The  strings  of  the  psalter, 
The  shapes  in  the  marble 
Our  passing  deplore. 

"VOICES. 

"  Truth  comes,  and  vanity  shall  be  no  more  ! 

"  NYMPHS. 

"  Not  wholly  we  vanish ; 
The  souls  of  the  children, 
The  faith  of  the  poets 

Shall  seek  us,  and  find. 

"  VOICES. 
"  Dead  are  the  things  the  world  has  left  behind. 

"  NYMPHS. 

"  Lost  beauty  shall  haunt  you 
With  tender  remorses ; 
And  out  of  its  exile 
The  passion  return. 

"  VOICES. 
"  The  flame  shall  purify,  the  fire  shall  burn  ! 


458  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

From  boyhood  Taylor  had  travelled,  and  had  written,  and 
had  read  poetry,  and  had  tried  to  be  a  poet ;  and  he  certainly 
made  something  which  looks  poetic.  As  surely,  however,  as 
his  verse  never  touched  the  popular  heart,  so  his  supreme 
literary  effort  never  much  appealed  to  those  who  seriously 
love  poetry. 

His  most  meritorious  work,  in  fact,  is  his  translation  of 
"  Faust."  He  put  before  himself  the  task  of  reproducing  the 
original  metres,  and  so  far  as  possible  the  original  rhymes  of 
that  extremely  complex  poem.  The  result  in  nowise  re 
sembles  normal  English  j  but  he  never  undertook  to  turn 
"  Faust "  into  an  English  poem ;  his  object  was  rather  to 
reproduce  in  English  words  the  effect  made  upon  his  mind  by 
prolonged,  sympathetic,  enthusiastic  study  of  the  German 
masterpiece.  Whatever  the  positive  value  of  his  translation, 
he  achieved  one  rare  practical  result.  By  simply  comparing 
his  work  with  Goethe's  original,  persons  who  know  very  little 
German  can  feel  the  power  and  beauty  of  Goethe's  style,  as 
well  as  of  his  meaning.  If  in  years  to  come  Taylor's  memory 
survives,  then,  it  will  probably  be  for  this  achievement  in  which 
he  made  no  attempt  at  originality.  His  career  was  honourable, 
but  not  brilliant,  nor  yet  distinguished  in  the  sense  in  which 
we  found  so  our  elder  literature. 

Another  man  who  flourished  in  New  York  at  about  the 
same  time,  and  lived  there  all  his  life,  was  Mr.  Richard  Grant 
White.  After  trying  the  pulpit,  medicine,  and  the  bar  in  turn, 
he  settled  down,  before  he  was  twenty-five  years  old,  as  a 
professional  critic.  His  experience  and  training  were  mostly 
journalistic ;  for  fourteen  years  he  was  connected  with  a  New 
York  paper  called  the  "  Courier  and  Inquirer."  With  little 
other  equipment  he  attempted  two  kinds  of  work  which  for 
excellence  require  severe  scholarship.  He  produced  an  edition 
of  Shakspere ;  and  he  published  two  or  three  books  on  the 
English  language.  As  editor  and  philologist,  Mr.  White  was 
intelligent,  clever,  and  eccentrically  dogmatic.  His  quasi- 


NEW   YORK  SINCE  1857  459 

scholarly  writings  are  always  interesting,  and  never  quite 
authoritative.  In  the  New  York  where  he  flourished,  how 
ever,  he  enjoyed  the  reputation  of  a  ripe  scholar.  He  had  a 
fondness  meanwhile  for  anonymous  writing ;  so  for  some 
time  he  was  not  recognised  as  the  author  of  what  now  appears 
to  be  his  most  remarkable  work.  This  was  the  "  New  Gos 
pel  of  Peace,"  a  satire  made  during  the  most  critical  period 
of  the  Civil  War.  In  burlesque  scriptural  style,  it  attacked 
that  school  of  Northern  political  thought,  popularly  called 
Copperhead,  which  denied  the  constitutional  right  of  the  Fed 
eral  Government  to  maintain  the  Union  by  force.  The 
satire,  which  still  seems  powerful,  is  said  to  have  converted 
waverers.  In  all  this  there  is  something  characteristic  of  the 
confused  New  York  we  now  have  in  mind.  A  clever  and 
versatile  critical  journalist,  who  sincerely  and  ardently  assumed 
the  authority  of  a  professionally  trained  scholar,  came  nearest 
to  success  in  an  irreverent  political  satire.  Mr.  White  died  in 
1885. 

Another  conspicuous  figure  in  New  York  literature,  equally 
different  from  Taylor  and  from  White,  was  Dr.  Josiah  Gilbert 
Holland.  He  was  born  in  1819  in  western  Massachusetts. 
He  took  his  medical  degree  at  a  small  college  in  Pittsfield ;  he 
was  a  contributor  to  the  "  Knickerbocker  Magazine ;  "  he  was 
for  a  time  Superintendent  of  Public  Schools  in  Missouri ;  and 
in  1849  he  became  editor  of  the  "Springfield  Republican"  in 
Massachusetts.  With  this  paper  he  retained  his  connection 
for  seventeen  years,  at  the  end  of  which,  partly  through  his 
shrewd  agency,  the  "  Springfield  Republican "  had  become 
probably  the  most  influential  American  newspaper  published 
outside  of  New  York.  In  1870  he  became  editor  of  "  Scrib- 
ner's  Monthly,"  which  later  took  the  name  of  the  "  Cen 
tury,"  and  of  which  he  remained  in  charge  until  his  death  in 
1888.  Dr.  Holland  was  not  only  a  respectable  and  successful 
journalist,  but  a  welcome  lecturer  on  various  social  topics,  and 
the  writer  of  numerous  books.  Among  these  were  a  popular 


460  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

"Life  of  Lincoln,"  published  in  1865,  and  three  or  four 
novels  which  had  considerable  success.  His  most  character 
istic  writings,  however,  were  didactic  essays,  the  most  success 
ful  of  which  were  the  series  entitled  "  Timothy  Titcomb's 
Letters  to  Young  People."  Others  were  called  "  Lessons  in 
Life,"  "  Letters  to  the  Joneses,"  and  "  Plain  Talks  on 
Familiar  Subjects." 

Here  is  a  stray  passage  from  this  last :  — 

"  I  account  the  loss  of  a  man's  life  and  individuality,  through  the 
non-adaptation  or  the  mal-adaptation  of  his  powers  to  his  pursuits,  the 
greatest  calamity,  next  to  the  loss  of  personal  virtue,  that  he  can  suffer 
in  this  world.  I  believe  that  a  full  moiety  of  the  trials  and  disappoint 
ments  that  darken  a  world  which,  I  am  sure,  was  intended  to  be 
measurably  bright  and  happy,  are  traceable  to  this  prolific  source. 
Men  are  not  in  their  places.  Women  are  not  in  their  places.  John  is 
doing  badly  the  work  that  William  would  do  well,  and  William  is  do 
ing  badly  the  work  that  John  would  do  well;  and  both  are  dis 
appointed  and  unhappy,  and  self-unmade.  It  is  quite  possible  that 
John  is  doing  Mary's  work  and  Mary  is  doing  John's  work. 

"  *  Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen, 

The  saddest  are  these :  " it  might  have  been."' 

"  Now,  I  do  not  suppose  that  we  shall  ever  get  the  world  all  right  on 
this  matter.  I  do  not  suppose  that  all  men  will  find  the  places  for 
which  they  were  designed,  or  that,  in  many  instances,  Maud  will  marry 
the  Judge ;  but  an  improvement  can  be  made ;  and  if  an  improvement 
ever  shall  be  made,  it  will  be  through  the  inculcation  of  sounder  views 
among  the  young." 

The  reverent  way  in  which  he  quotes  the  very  worst  rhyme 
in  which  Whittier  ever  imbedded  a  commonplace,  and  then 
alludes  to  Maud  Muller  and  her  Judge  as  if  they  were  equally 
immortal  with  the  Bible,  typifies  that  sort  of  commonplace 
which  made  Dr.  Holland  dear  to  less  cultivated  people.  It  is 
saved  from  indignity  by  its  apparent  unconsciousness  of  limita 
tion.  A  similar  quality  pervaded  his  verse,  some  of  which  is 
preserved  by  Stedman  and  Hutchinson.  His  honesty,  his 
kindness,  and  his  sound  moral  sense  endeared  htm  to  the 
general  public,  and  in  their  own  way  did  much  to  strengthen 


NEW  YORK  SINCE  1857  461 

the  homely  principles  of  our  level  country.  He  sold 
thousands  of  volumes,  he  lived  honourably,  and  he  died 
respected. 

Another  writer,  somewhat  similar  in  general  character,  but 
less  versatile,  was  the  Reverend  Edward  Payson  Roe,  born  in 
New  York  State  in  1838,  for  a  while  a  student  at  Williams 
College,  a  volunteer  chaplain  during  the  Civil  War,  and  after 
wards  a  Presbyterian  minister  at  Highland  Falls,  New  York. 
In  1872  he  published  a  novel  called  "  Barriers  Burned  Away  " 
which  proved  so  successful  that  he  gave  up  the  ministry,  and 
settling  down  in  a  small  town  on  the  Hudson  River  produced 
a  steady  stream  of  novels  until  his  death  in  1888.  Whit- 
comb's  "Chronological  Outlines  of  American  Literature" 
record  the  titles  of  nineteen  of  them.  They  are  said  to  have 
had  extraordinary  popular  success.  They  did  nobody  any 
harm ;  and  their  general  literary  quality  and  power  of  doing 
good  already  seem  inconsiderable. 

There  have  been  many  other  writers  in  New  York  mean 
while,  but  few  of  much  eminence  who  are  not  still  alive.  Of 
one,  who  died  not  long  ago,  the  promise  seemed  more  than 
usual.  Henry  Cuyler  Bunner,  for  years  editor  of  u  Puck," 
was  so  busy  a  journalist  that  only  persistent  effort  allowed  him 
time  for  any  but  his  regular  work.  The  verses  and  the  stories 
which  he  has  left  us,  then,  are  only  a  fragment  of  what  might 
have  been,  had  he  had  more  leisure,  or  had  he  been  spared 
beyond  the  early  middle  life  when  unhappily  his  career  ended. 
Throughout  this  apparently  ephemeral  work,  however,  there  is 
a  touch  so  sympathetic,  so  sensitive,  so  winning,  that  there 
seems  a  peculiar  fitness  in  his  enduring  monument.  The 
chief  literary  prize  at  Columbia  College,  the  chief  seat 
of  learning  in  his  native  city,  is  one  lately  founded  in  his 
memory. 

Of  all  these  writers,  and  of  the  scores  more  who  wrote  at 
the  same  time,  and  most  of  whom  are  writing  to-day,  the 
volumes  of  Stedman  and  Hutchinson  will  give  some  impres- 


462  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

sion.  In  former  times  Griswold  and  Duyckinck  made  simi 
lar  collections  of  literature  in  American.  As  we  have  seen, 
both  alike  properly  included  many  names  for  which  Stedman 
and  Hutchinson  have  found  no  room.  It  is  hard  to  resist 
the  conclusion  that  whoever  shall  make  a  new  library  of 
American  literature,  thirty  or  forty  years  hence,  will  by  the 
same  token  find  no  place  for  many  of  our  contemporaries  mo 
mentarily  preserved  by  our  latest  anthologists.  As  you  turn 
their  pages,  you  can  hardly  avoid  feeling  that,  however  valua 
ble  these  may  be  as  history,  they  contain  little  which  merits 
permanence. 

Depressing  as  this  may  at  first  seem  to  patriotic  spirit,  it 
has  another  aspect.  As  we  look  back  on  the  literary  records 
of  New  England,  we  can  perceive  in  its  local  history  a  trait 
like  one  which  has  marked  those  more  fortunate  regions  of 
the  old  world  whose  expression  has  proved  lasting.  Artistic 
expression  is  apt  to  be  the  final  fruit  of  a  society  about  to 
wither.  For  generations,  or  perhaps  for  centuries,  traditions 
grow  until  they  reach  a  form  which  locally  distinguishes  the 
spot  which  has  developed  them  from  any  other  in  the  world. 
Then,  at  moments  of  change,  there  sometimes  arises,  in  a  race 
about  to  pass  from  the  living,  a  mysterious  impulse  to  make 
plastic  or  written  records  of  what  the  past  has  meant.  These 
are  what  render  even  Greece  and  Italy  and  Elizabethan  Eng 
land  more  than  mere  names.  So  one  gradually  grows  to  feel 
that  only  the  passing  of  old  New  England  made  its  literature 
possible.  The  great  material  prosperity  of  New  York,  mean 
while,  has  attracted  thither  during  the  past  forty  years  count 
less  numbers  of  energetic  people  from  all  over  the  world,  — 
foreigners,  New  Englanders,  Westerners,  Southerners,  and 
whomever  else.  In  this  immigrant  invasion  the  old  New  York 
of  Irving  and  Cooper  and  the  rest  has  been  swallowed  up. 
There  is  now  hardly  a  city  in  the  world  where  you  are  so 
little  apt  to  meet  people  whose  families  have  lived  there  for 
three  successive  generations.  Our  new  metropolis,  in  fact,  is 


NEW   YORK  SINCE  1857  463 

not  only  far  from  such  a  stage  of  decline  as  should  mark  the 
beginning  of  its  passage  from  life  to  history,  but  it  has  not 
even  formed  the  tangible  traditions  which  may  by  and  by 
define  its  spiritual  character. 

What  its  features  may  finally  be,  then,  we  may  only  guess. 
On  the  whole,  one  inclines  to  guess  hopefully.  Beneath  its 
bewildering  material  activity  there  is  a  greater  vitality,  a  greater 
alertness,  and  in  some  aspects  a  greater  wholesomeness,  of  in 
telligence  than  one  is  apt  to  find  elsewhere.  It  is  not  that  the 
artists  and  the  men  of  letters  who  live  there  have  done  work 
which  even  on  our  American  scale  may  be  called  great.  It  is 
not  that  these  men,  or  men  who  shall  soon  follow  them,  may  be 
expected  to  make  lasting  monuments.  It  is  rather  that  about 
them  surges,  with  all  its  fluctuating  good  and  evil,  the  irresistible 
tide  of  world-existence.  The  great  wealth  of  New  York  and 
its  colossal  material  power,  of  course,  involve  a  social  complex 
ity,  and  at  least  a  superficial  corruption,  greater  than  America 
has  hitherto  known  ;  and  the  men  who  live  amid  this  bustling 
turmoil  are  habitually  in  contact  with  base  things.  Yet  hun 
dreds  of  them,  sound  at  heart,  think  and  speak  with  a  buoyant 
courage  which,  even  to  a  New  Englander,  seems  almost  youth 
fully  to  preserve  that  fresh  simplicity  of  heart  so  characteristic 
of  our  ancestrally  inexperienced  America.  You  may  shake 
your  head  at  them,  or  smile,  as  much  as  you  will ;  they  impart 
to  you,  despite  yourself,  a  mood  of  inexplicably  brighter  hope 
fulness  than  their  words,  or  the  facts  which  those  words  set 
forth,  seem  to  justify. 

So,  very  generally,  we  may  say  that  our  Middle  States,  as 
they  used  to  be  called,  are  now  dominated  by  New  York. 
This  town,  whose  domination  for  the  moment  is  not  only 
local  but  almost  national,  owes  its  predominance  to  that  out 
burst  of  material  force  which  throughout  the  victorious  North 
followed  the  period  of  the  Civil  War.  What  may  come  of 
it  no  one  can  tell.  Of  the  past  and  the  present  there  is  little 
to  remark  beyond  what  we  have  remarked  already.  There  is, 


464  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

however,  one  exception.  The  Middle  States,  and  to  a  great 
degree  the  city  of  New  York  itself,  have  produced  just  one 
eccentric  literary  figure,  who  has  emerged  into  an  isola 
tion  which  is  sometimes  believed  eminent.  This  is  Walt 
Whitman. 


II 

WALT    WHITMAN 

WALT  WHITMAN  was  older  than  one  is  apt  to  remember. 
He  was  born  on  Long  Island  in  1819,  and  he  died  in  1892. 
His  life,  then,  was  almost  exactly  contemporary  with  Lowell's. 
No  two  lives  could  have  been  much  more  different  in  condition. 
Lowell,  the  son  of  a  minister,  closely  related  to  the  best  people 
of  New  England,  lived  all  his  life  amid  the  gentlest  academic 
and  social  influences  in  America.  Whitman  was  the  son  of  a 
carpenter  and  builder  on  the  outskirts  of  Brooklyn ;  the  only 
New  England  man  of  letters  equally  humble  in  origin  was 
Whittier. 

The  contrast  between  Whitman  and  Whittier,  however,  is 
almost  as  marked  as  that  between  Whitman  and  Lowell. 
Whittier,  the  child  of  Quaker  farmers  in  the  Yankee  country, 
grew  up  and  lived  almost  all  his  life  amid  guileless  influences. 
Whitman,  born  of  the  artisan  class  in  a  region  close  to  the 
most  considerable  and  corrupt  centre  of  population  on  his 
native  continent,  had  a  rather  vagrant  youth  and  manhood.  At 
times  he  was  a  printer,  at  times  a  school-master,  at  times 
editor  of  stray  country  newspapers,  and  by  and  by  he  took  up 
his  father's  trade  of  carpenter  and  builder,  erecting  a  number 
of  small  houses  in  his  unlovely  native  region.  Meanwhile  he 
had  rambled  about  the  country  and  into  Canada,  in  much  the 
temper  of  those  wanderers  whom  we  now  call  tramps ;  but 
in  general  until  past  thirty  years  old,  he  was  apt  to  be  within 
scent  of  the  East  River.  The  New  York  of  which  his  er 
ratic  habits  thus  made  the  lower  aspects  so  familiar  to  him 
was  passing,  in  the  last  days  of  the  Knickerbocker  School,  into 

30 


466  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

its  metropolitan  existence.  The  first  edition  of  Whitman's 
"  Leaves  of  Grass"  appeared  in  1855,  the  year  which  pro 
duced  the  "  Knickerbocker  Gallery." 

During  the  Civil  War  he  served  devotedly  as  an  army 
nurse.  After  the  war,  until  1873,  he  held  some  small  govern 
ment  clerkships  at  Washington.  In  1873  a  paralytic  stroke 
brought  his  active  life  to  an  end ;  for  his  last  twenty  years  he 
lived  an  invalid  at  a  little  house  in  Camden,  New  Jersey. 

Until  1855,  when  the  first  edition  of  "Leaves  of  Grass" 
appeared  in  a  thin  folio,  some  of  which  he  set  up  with  his  own 
hands,  Whitman  had  not  declared  himself  as  a  man  of  letters. 
From  that  time  to  the  end  he  was  constantly  publishing  his 
eccentric  poetry,  which  from  time  to  time  he  collected  in  in 
creasing  bulk  under  the  old  title.  He  published,  too,  some 
stray  volumes  of  prose,  — u  Democratic  Vistas,"  and  the  like. 
Prose  and  poetry  alike  seem  permeated  with  a  conviction  that 
he  had  a  mission  to  express  and  to  extend  the  spirit  of  democ 
racy,  which  he  believed  characteristic  of  his  country.  To 
himself,  then,  he  seemed  the  inspired  prophet  of  an  America 
which  he  asserted  to  be  above  all  things  else  the  land  of  the 
people  ;  few  men  have  ever  cherished  a  purpose  more  literally 
popular.  His  fate  has  been  ironic.  Though  even  in  his  life 
time  he  became  conspicuous,  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  man 
of  letters  in  his  country  ever  appealed  less  to  the  masses. 
He  was  a  prophet  of  democracy,  if  you  like ;  but  the  public  to 
which  his  prophecy  made  its  way  was  at  once  limited,  fas 
tidiously  overcultivated,  and  apt  to  be  of  foreign  birth. 

Beyond  question  Whitman  had  remarkable  individuality  and 
power.  Equally  beyond  question  he  was  among  the  most 
eccentric  individuals  who  ever  put  pen  to  paper.  The  natural 
result  of  this  has  been  that  his  admirers  have  admired  him  in 
tensely  ;  while  whoever  has  found  his  work  repellent  has  found 
it  irritating.  Particularly  abroad,  however,  he  has  attracted 
much  critical  attention  ;  and  many  critics  have  been  disposed 
to  maintain  that  his  amorphous  prophecies  of  democracy  are 


WALT   WHITMAN  467 

deeply  characteristic  of  America.  The  United  States,  they 
point  out,  are  professedly  the  most  democratic  country 
in  the  world ;  Whitman  is  professedly  the  most  democratic 
of  American  writers}  consequently  he  must  be  the  most 
typical. 

The  abstract  ideal  of  democracy  has  never  been  better 
summed  up  than  in  the  well-known  watchwords  of  republican 
France  :  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity.  Disguised  ancTcfistorted 
though  these  words  may  have  been  by  a  century  of  French 
Revolutionary  excess,  there  is  no  denying  that  they  stand  for 
ideals  essentially  noble  and  inspiring.  What  is  more,  these 
ideals,  which  everywhere  underlie  the  revolutionary  spirit,  have 
consciously  influenced  the  nineteenth  century  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic.  In  the  progress  of  American  democracy,  how 
ever,  one  of  these  ideals  has  been  more  strenuously  kept  in 
mind  than  the  other  two.  American  democracy  did  not  spring 
from  abstract  philosophising  ;  it  had  its  origin  in  the  old  concep 
tions  of  liberty  and  rights  as  maintained  by  the  Common  Law  of 
England.  Though  no  commonplace,  then,  has  been  more 
familiar  to  American  ears  than  the  glittering  generality  which 
maintains  all  men  to  be  born  equal,  the  practical  enthusiasm 
of  American  democracy  has  been  chiefly  excited  by  the  ideal 
of  liberty.  The  theoretical  democracy  of  Europe,  on  the  other 
hand,  has  tended  rather  to  emphasise  the  ideal  of  fraternity, 
which  seems  incidentally  to  include  a  sound  thrashing  for  any 
brother  who  fails  to  feel  fraternal ;  and  still  more  this  Euro 
pean  democracy  has  tended  increasingly  to  emphasise  the  dogma 
of  human  equality.  Though  this  doubtless  beautiful  ideal 
eloquently  appeals  to  many  generous  natures,  it  seems  hardly 
to  accord  with  the  teachings  either  of  natural  law  or  of  any  re 
corded  experience.  Nothing,  it  maintains,  ought  really  to  be 
held  intrinsically  better  than  anything  else.  In  plain  words, 
the  ideal  of  equality,  carried  to  its  extreme,  asserts  all  superi 
ority,  all  excellence,  to  be  a  phase  of  evil. 

Now,  Walt  Whitman's  gospel  of  democracy  certainly  in- 


468  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

eluded  liberty  and  laid  strong  emphasis  on  fraternity.  He 
liked  to  hail  his  fellow-citizens  by  the  wild,  queer  name  of 
u  camerados,"  which,  for  some  obscure  reason  of  his  own,  he 
preferred  to  "  comrades."  The  ideal  which  most  appealed  to 
him,  however,  was  that  of  equality.  Though  he  would  hardly 
have  assented  to  such  orthodox  terms,  his  creed  seems  to  have 
been  that,  as  God  made  everything,  one  thing  is  just  as  good 
as  another.  There  are  aspects  in  which  such  a  proposition 
seems  analogous  to  one  which  should  maintain  a  bronze  cent 
to  be  every  whit  as  good  as  a  gold  eagle  because  both  are 
issued  by  the  same  government  from  the  same  mint.  At  best, 
however,  analogies  are  misleading  arguments  ;  and  people  who 
share  Whitman's  ideal  are  apt  to  disregard  as  superstitious 
any  argument,  however  impressive,  which  should  threaten  to 
modify  their  faith  in  equality.  It  is  a  superstition,  they  would 
maintain,  that  some  ways  of  doing  things  are  decent  and  some 
not ;  one  way  is  really  just  as  good  as  another.  It  is  a  super 
stition  that  kings,  nobles,  and  gentlemen  are  in  any  aspect 
lovelier  than  the  mob.  It  is  a  superstition  that  men  of  learn 
ing  are  intellectually  better  than  the  untutored.  It  is  a  super 
stition  which  would  hold  a  man  who  can  make  a  chair  unable 
consequently  to  make  a  constitution.  It  is  a  superstition  that 
virtuous  women  are  inherently  better  than  street-walkers.  It 
is  a  superstition  that  law  is  better  than  anarchy.  There  are 
things,  to  be  sure,  which  are  not  superstitions.  Evil  and  base 
ness  and  ugliness  are  real  facts,  to  be  supremely  denounced 
and  hated  ;  and  incidentally,  we  must  admit,  few  arraignments 
of  the  vulgarity  and  materialism  which  have  developed  in  the 
United  States  are  more  pitiless  than  those  which  appear  in 
Whitman's  "  Democratic  Vistas."  The  cause  of  these  hurt 
ful  things,  however,  he  is  satisfied  to  find  in  the  traces  of  our 
ancestral  and  superstitious  devotion  to  outworn  ideals  of  excel 
lence.  We  can  all  find  salvation  in  the  new,  life-saving  ideal 
of  equality.  Let  America  accept  this  ideal,  and  these  faults 
will  vanish  into  that  limbo  of  the  past  to  which  he  would 


WALT  WHITMAN  469 

gladly  consign  all  superstitions.  Among  these,  he  logically, 
though  reluctantly,  includes  a  great  part  of  the  poetry  of 
Shakspere ;  for  Shakspere,  undoubtedly  a  poet,  was  a  poet  of 
inequality,  who  represented  the  people  as  a  mob.  For  all  his 
genius,  then,  Shakspere  was  an  apostle  of  the  devil,  another 
lying  prophet  of  the  superstition  of  excellence. 

Even  though  excellence  be  a  wicked  and  tyrannical  ideal, 
however,  democratic  prophecy  does  not  forbid  the  whole 
world  equally  to  improve.  Equalisation  need  not  mean  the  re 
ducing  of  all  that  is  admirable  to  the  level  of  what  is  base.  It 
may  just  as  well  mean  the  raising  of  much  that  is  base  towards 
the  height  of  what  is  admirable.  The  superstition  which  has 
worked  most  sordid  evil  is  that  which  denies  human  equality. 
Retract  the  denial,  then ;  let  human  beings  be  equal,  and  the 
force  which  has  most  distorted  mankind  shall  cease  working. 
Then  all  alike  may  finally  rise,  side  by  side,  into  an  equality 
superior  to  what  has  gone  before.  The  prophets  of  equality 
are  so  stirred  by  dreams  of  the  future  that  they  half  forget 
the  horrors  of  present  or  past ;  and  among  prophets  of  equality 
Walt  Whitman  has  the  paradoxical  merit  of  eminence. 

Now,  this  dogma  of  equality  clearly  involves  a  trait  which 
has  not  yet  been  generally  characteristic  of  American  thought 
or  letters,  —  a  complete  confusion  of  values.  In  the  early 
days  of  Renaissance  in  New  England,  to  be  sure,  Emerson 
and  the  rest,  dazzled  by  the  splendours  of  that  new  world  of 
art  and  literature  which  was  at  last  thrown  open,  made  small 
distinction  between  those  aspects  of  it  which  are  excellent  and 
those  which  are  only  stimulating.  At  the  same  time  they  ad 
hered  as  firmly  as  the  Puritans  themselves  to  the  ideal  of 
excellence  j  and  among  the  things  with  which  they  were  really 
familiar  they  pretty  shrewdly  distinguished  those  which  were 
most  valuable,  either  on  earth  or  in  heaven.  With  Walt 
Whitman,  on  the  other  hand,  everything  is  confused. 

Take,  for  example,  a  passage  from  his  "  Song  of  Myself," 
which  contains  some  of  his  best-known  phrases  :  — 


470  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

"  A  child  said  What  is  the  grass  ?  fetching  it  to  me  with  full  hands  ; 
How  could  I  answer  the  child  ?    I  do  not  know  what  it  is  any  more 
than  he. 

"  I  guess  it  must  be  the  flag  of  my  disposition,  out  of  hopeful  green 
stuff  woven. 

"  Or  I  guess  it  is  the  handkerchief  of  the  Lord, 
A  scented  gift  and  remembrancer  designedly  dropt, 
Bearing  the  owner's  name  someway  in  the  corners,  that  we  may  see 
and  remark,  and  say  Whose  ? 

"  Or  I  guess  the  grass  is  itself  a  child,  the  produced  babe  of  vegetation. 

"  Or  I  guess  it  is  a  uniform  hieroglyphic, 

And  it  means,  Sprouting  alike  in  broad  zones  and  narrow  zones. 
Growing  among  black  folds  as  among  white, 

Kanuck,  Tuckahoe,  Congressman,  Cuff,  I  give  them  the  same,  I 
receive  them  the  same. 

"  And  now  it  seems  to  me  the  beautiful  uncut  hair  of  graves. 

"  Tenderly  will  I  use  you,  curling  grass, 
It  may  be  you  transpire  from  the  breasts  of  young  men, 
It  may  be  if  I  had  known  them  I  would  have  loved  them, 
It  may  be  you  are  from  old  people,  or  from  offspring  taken  soon  out 

of  their  mothers'  laps, 
And  here  you  are  the  mothers'  laps. 

"  The  grass  is  very  dark  to  be  from  the  white  heads  of  old  mothers, 
Darker  than  the  colourless  beards  of  old  men, 
Dark  to  come  from  under  the  faint  red  roofs  of  mouths. 

w  O  I  perceive  after  all  so  many  uttering  tongues, 
And  I  perceive  they  do  not  come  from  the  roofs  of  mouths  for 
nothing. 

"  I  wish  I  could  translate  the  hints  about  the  dead  young  men  and 

women, 

And  the  hints  about  the  old  men  and  mothers,  and  the  offspring 
taken  soon  out  of  their  laps. 

**  What  do  you  think  has  become  of  the  young  and  old  men  ? 
And  what  do  you  think  has  become  of  the  women  and  children  ? 

"  They  are  alive  and  well  somewhere, 
The  smallest  sprout  shows  there  is  really  no  death, 
And  if  ever  there  was  it  had  forward  life,  and  does  not  wait  at  the 

end  to  arrest  it, 
And  ceas'd  the  moment  life  appear'd. 


WALT   WHITMAN  471 

"  All  goes  onward  and  outward,  nothing  collapses, 
And  to  die  is  different  from  what  any  one  supposed,  and  luckier." 

Here  is  perhaps  his  best-known  phrase,  "  the  beautiful  uncut 
hair  of  graves."  Here  are  other  good  phrases,  like  "  the  faint 
red  roofs  of  mouths."  Here,  too,  is  undoubtedly  tender  feel 
ing.  Here,  into  the  bargain,  is  such  rubbish  as  "  I  guess  it  is 
the  handkerchief  of  the  Lord,"  —  who  incidentally  uses  per 
fumery,  —  and  such  jargon  as  "  Kanuck,  Tuckahoe,  Congress 
man,  Cuff."  In  an  inextricable  hodge-podge  you  find  at  once 
beautiful  phrases  and  silly  gabble,  tender  imagination  and  inso 
lent  commonplace,  —  pretty  much  everything,  in  short,  but 
humour.  In  America  this  literary  anarchy,  this  complete  con 
fusion  of  values,  is  especially  eccentric ;  for  America  has  gen 
erally  displayed  instinctive  common-sense,  and  common-sense 
implies  some  notion  of  what  things  are  worth.  One  begins 
to  see  why  Whitman  has  been  so  much  more  eagerly  wel 
comed  abroad  than  at  home.  His  conception  of  equality, 
utterly  ignoring  values,  is  not  that  of  American  democracy, 
but  rather  that  of  European.  His  democracy,  in  short,  is  the 
least  native  which  has  ever  found  voice  in  his  country.  The 
saving  grace  of  American  democracy  has  been  a  tacit  recog 
nition  that  excellence  is  admirable. 

In  temper,  then,  Walt  Whitman  seems  less  American  than 
any  other  of  our  conspicuous  writers.  It  does  not  follow  that 
in  some  aspects  he  is  not  very  American  indeed.  Almost  as 
certainly  as  Hawthorne,  though  very  differently,  he  had  the  true 
artistic  temperament ;  life  moved  him  to  moods  which  could 
find  relief  only  in  expression.  Such  a  temperament  would  have 
expressed  itself  anywhere ;  and  Whitman's  would  probably 
have  found  the  most  congenial  material  for  expression  in  those 
European  regions  which  have  been  most  disturbed  by  French 
Revolutionary  excess.  He  chanced,  however^  to  be  born,  and 
to  attain  the  maturity  which  he  awaited  before  he  began  to 
publish,  in  unmingled  American  surroundings.  As  obviously 
as  Hawthorne's  experience  was  confined  to  New  England, 


472  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

Whitman's  was  confined  to  that  of  the  lower  classes  in  those 
regions  which  were  developing  into  modern  New  York. 

Whoever  remembers  the  growth  of  this  region  will  remem 
ber  what  sometimes  seemed  the  ugliest  thing  to  the  eye,  the 
most  overwhelmingly  oppressive  to  any  instinct  of  taste,  the 
most  sordidly  hopeless  atmosphere  possible  to  human  experi 
ence.  Now,  Whitman,  we  remember,  came  to  his  maturity 
within  scent  of  the  East  River;  and  certainly  the  East  River, 
separating  New  York  and  Brooklyn,  was  at  that  time  the  spot 
of  spots  where  life  seemed  most  material,  most  grindingly 
distant  from  ideal  beauty.  Yet  the  contemplation  of  this 
very  East  River  evoked  from  Whitman  the  poem  which 
sometimes  seems  his  most  nearly  beautiful.  Here  is  the  last 
stanza  of  this  "  Crossing  Brooklyn  Ferry  "  :  — 

"  Flow  on,  river !  flow  with  the  flood-tide,  and  ebb  with  the  ebb-tide ! 
Frolic  on,  crested  and  scallop-edg'd  waves ! 
Gorgeous  clouds  of  the  sunset !  drench  with  your  splendour  me,  or 

the  men  and  women  generations  after  me  ! 
Cross  from  shore  to  shore,  countless  crowds  of  passengers  ! 
Stand  up,  tall  masts  of  Mannahatta !  stand  up,  beautiful  hills  of 

Brooklyn  ! 

Throb,  baffled  and  curious  brain !  throw  out  questions  and  answers ! 
Suspend  here  and  everywhere,  eternal  float  of  solution  ! 
Gaze,  loving  and  thirsting  eyes,  in  the  house  or  street  or  public 

assembly ! 
Sound  out,  voices  of  young  men !  loudly  and  musically  call  me  by 

my  nighest  name ! 

Live,  old  life  !  play  the  part  that  looks  back  on  the  actor  or  actress  ! 
Play  the  old  role,  the  role  that  is  great  or  small  according  as  one 

makes  it ! 
Consider,  you  who  peruse  me,  whether  I  may  not  in  unknown  ways 

be  looking  upon  you  ; 
Be  firm,  rail  over  the  river,  to  support  those  who  lean  idly,  yet  haste 

with  the  hasting  current ; 
Fly  on,  sea-birds  1  fly  sideways,  or  wheel  in  large  circles  high  in  the 

air; 
Receive  the  summer  sky,  you  water,  and  faithfully  hold  it  till  all  the 

downcast  eyes  have  time  to  take  it  from  you  ! 
Diverge,  fine  spokes  of  light,  from  the  shape  of  my  head,  or  anyone's 

head,  in  the  sunlit  water  ! 


WALT  WHITMAN  473 

Come  on,  ships  from  the  lower  bay !  pass  up  or  down,  white-sail'd 

schooners,  sloops,  lighters ! 

Flaunt  away,  flags  of  all  nations !  be  duly  lowered  at  sunset ! 
Burn  high  your  fires,  foundry  chimneys  !  cast   black   shadows  at 

nightfall !  cast  red  and  yellow  light  over  the  tops  of  the  houses ! 
Appearances,  now  or  henceforth,  indicate  what  you  are  ; 
You  necessary  film,  continue  to  envelope  the  soul, 
About  my  body  for  me,  and  your  body  for  you,  be  hung  our  divinest 

aromas, 
Thrive  cities,  —  bring  your  freight,  bring  your  shows,  ample  and 

sufficient  rivers, 

Expand,  being  than  which  none  else  is  perhaps  more  spiritual, 
Keep  your  places,  objects  than  which  none  else  is  more  lasting. 

"  You  have  waited,  you  always  wait,  you  dumb,  beautiful  ministers, 
We  receive  you  with  free  sense  at  last,  and  are  insatiate  hence 
forward, 
Not  you  any  more  shall  be  able  to  foil  us,  or  withhold  yourselves 

from  us, 
We  use  you  and  do  not  cast  you  aside  —  we  plant  you  permanently 

within  us, 

We  fathom  you  not  —  we  love  you  —  there  is  perfection  in  you  also, 
You  furnish  your  parts  toward  eternity, 
Great  or  small  you  furnish  your  parts  toward  the  soul." 

The  eight  preceding  stanzas  are  very  like  this,  —  confused, 
inarticulate,  and  surging  in  a  mad  kind  of  rhythm  which 
sounds  as  if  hexameters  were  trying  to  bubble  through  sewage. 
For  all  these  faults,  Whitman  has  here  accomplished  a  wonder. 
Despite  his  eccentric  insolence  both  of  phrase  and  of  temper 
you  feel  that  in  a  region  where  another  eye  would  have  seen 
only  unspeakable  vileness,  he  has  found  impulses  which  prove 
it,  like  every  other  region  on  earth,  a  fragment  of  the  divine 
eternities.  The  glories  and  beauties  of  the  universe  are  really 
perceptible  everywhere ;  and  into  what  seemed  utterly  sordid 
Whitman  has  breathed  ennobling  imaginative  fervour.  Cul 
tured  and  academic  folk  are  disposed  to  shrink  from  what  they 
call  base,  to  ignore  it,  to  sneer  at  it ;  looking  closer,  Whitman 
tells  us  that  even  amid  base  things  you  cannot  wander  so  far 
as  to  lose  sight  of  the  heavens,  with  all  their  fountains  of 
glorious  emotion. 


474  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

But  what  is  this  emotion  ?  Just  here  Whitman  seems  to 
stop.  With  singular  vividness,  and  with  the  unstinted  sym 
pathy  of  his  fervent  faith  in  equality,  he  tells  what  he  sees. 
Though  often  his  jargon  is  amorphously  meaningless,  his 
words  are  now  and  again  so  apt  as  to  approach  that  inevitable 
union  of  thought  and  phrase  which  makes  lasting  poetry. 
When  he  has  reported  what  he  sees,  however,  utterly  confus 
ing  its  values,  he  has  nothing  more  to  say  about  it.  At  most 
he  leaves  you  with  a  sense  of  new  realities  concerning  which 
you  must  do  your  thinking  for  yourself. 

Sometimes,  of  course,  he  was  more  articulate.  The  Civil 
War  stirred  him  to  his  depths  ;  and  he  drew  of  its  byways 
such  little  pictures  as  "  Ethiopia  Saluting  the  Colours  "  :  — 

"Who  are  you  dusky  woman,  so  ancient,  hardly  human, 
With  your  wooly-white  and  turban'd  head,  and  bare  bony  feet? 
Why  rising  by  the  roadside  here,  do  you  the  colours  greet  ? 

"  ('T  is  while  our  army  lines  Carolina's  sands  and  pines, 
Forth  from  thy  hovel  door  thou  Ethiopia  com'st  to  me, 
As  under  doughty  Sherman  I  march  toward  the  sea.) 

"  Me  master  years  a  hundred  since  from  my  parents  sitnder'd, 
A  little  child,  they  caught  me  as  the  savage  beast  is  caught, 
Then  hither  me  across  the  sea  the  cruel  slaver  brought. 

"  No  further  does  she  say,  but  lingering  all  the  day, 
Her  high-borne  turban'd  head  she  wags,  and  rolls  her  darkling  eye 
And  courtesies  to  the  regiments,  the  guidons  moving  by. 

"  What  is  it  fateful  woman,  so  blear,  hardly  human  ? 
Why  wag  your  head  with  turban  bound,  yellow,  red  and  green  ? 
Are  the  things  so  strange  and  marvellous  you  see  or  have  seen  ?  " 

In  Lincoln  he  found  his  ideal  hero ;  and  his  verse  on  Lin 
coln's  death  is  probably  his  best :  — 

"  O  Captain  !  my  Captain !  our  fearful  trip  is  done, 
The  ship  has  weathered  every  rack,  the  prize  we  sought  is  won, 
The  port  is  near,  the  bells  I  hear,  the  people  all  exulting, 
While  follow  eyes  the  steady  keel,  the  vessel  grim  and  daring; 


WALT   WHITMAN  475 

But  O  heart !  heart  !  heart ! 
O  the  bleeding  drops  of  red, 
Where  on  the  deck  my  Captain  lies, 
Fallen  cold  and  dead. 

"  O  Captain !  my  Captain !  rise  up  and  hear  the  bells ; 
Rise  up  — for  you  the  flag  is  flung  — for  you  the  bugle  trills, 
For  you  bouquets  and  ribbon'd  wreaths  —  for  you  the  shores   a- 

crowding, 

For  you  they  call,  the  swaying  mass,  their  eager  faces  turning  ; 
Here  Captain  !  dear  father ! 
This  arm  beneath  your  head ! 

It  is  some  dream  that  on  the  deck, 
You  Ve  fallen  cold  and  dead. 

"  My  Captain  does  not  answer,  his  lips  are  pale  and  still, 
My  father  does  not  feel  my  arm,  he  has  no  pulse  nor  will, 
The  ship  is  anchored  safe  and  sound,  its  voyage  closed  and  done, 
From  fearful  trip  the  victor  ship  comes  in  with  object  won ; 
Exult  O  shores,  and  ring  O  bells ! 
But  I  with  mournful  tread, 

Walk  the  deck  my  Captain  lies, 
Fallen  cold  and  dead." 

Even  in  bits  like  this,  however,  which  come  so  much 
nearer  form  than  is  usual  with  Whitman,  one  feels  his  per 
verse  rudeness  of  style.  Such  eccentricity  of  manner  is  bound 
to  affect  different  tempers  in  different  ways.  One  kind  of 
reader,  naturally  eager  for  individuality  and  fresh  glimpses  of 
truth,  is  disposed  to  identify  oddity  and  originality.  Another 
kind  of  reader  distrusts  literary  eccentricity  as  instinctively  as 
polite  people  distrust  bad  manners.  In  both  of  these  instinc 
tive  reactions  from  such  a  method  of  address  as  Whitman's 
there  is  an  element  of  truth.  Beyond  doubt,  eccentric  mas 
ters  of  the  fine  arts  give  rise  to  perverse  eccentricity  in  imita 
tors.  Browning  and  Carlyle,  to  go  no  further,  have  bred  in 
brains  feebler  than  their  own  much  nonsensical  spawn  ;  and 
so  has  Walt  Whitman.  But  some  artists  of  great  power 
prove  naturally  unable  to  express  themselves  properly.  Their 
trouble  is  like  a  muscular  distortion  which  should  compel 
lameness,  or  a  vocal  malformation  which  should  make  utter- 


476  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

ance  hoarse  or  shrill.  So  there  have  been  great  men,  and 
there  will  be  more,  whom  fate  compels  either  to  express  them 
selves  uncouthly  or  else  to  stay  dumb.  Such  a  man,  great  or 
not,  Whitman  seems  to  have  been.  Such  men,  greater  than 
he,  were  Carlyle  and  Browning.  The  critical  temper  which 
would  hold  them  perverse,  instead  of  unfortunate,  is  mistaken. 

On  the  other  hand,  that  different  critical  temper  which 
would  welcome  their  perversities  as  newly  revealed  evidences 
of  genius  is  quite  as  mistaken  in  another  way.  If  any  general 
law  may  be  inferred  from  the  history  of  fine  arts,  it  is  that 
any  persistent  school  of  expression  must  be  articulate.  In  any 
art,  of  course,  vital  expression  must  be  spontaneous;  academic 
training,  dogmatic  routine,  has  never  originated  much  that  is 
worth  while.  The  nobler  works  of  art,  however,  which  have 
maintained  themselves  as  permanent  parts  of  the  great  structure 
of  human  expression,  have  form.  Their  lasting  vitality  comes 
partly  from  the  fact  that  their  makers  have  spontaneously  obeyed 
natural  laws  which  may  be  generalised  into  academic  princi 
ples.  The  development  of  human  expression  seems  like  the 
growth  of  a  tree.  The  same  vital  force  which  sends  the 
trunk  heavenward,  puts  forth  branches,  and  from  these  in  turn 
sends  forth  twigs  and  leaves;  but  the  further  they  stray  from 
the  root,  the  weaker  they  prove.  The  trunk  lives,  and  the 
greater  branches ;  year  by  year,  the  lesser  twigs  and  leaves 
wither.  Now,  eccentricity  of  manner,  however  unavoidable,  is 
apt  to  indicate  that  art  has  strayed  dangerously  far  from  its 
vital  origin.  Oddity  is  no  part  of  solid  artistic  development ; 
however  beautiful  or  impressive,  it  is  rather  an  excrescent  out 
growth,  bound  to  prove  abortive,  and  at  the  same  time  to  sap 
life  from  a  parent  stock  which  without  it  might  grow  more 
loftily  and  strongly. 

Walt  Whitman's  style  is  of  this  excrescent,  abortive  kind. 
Like  Carlyle's  or  Browning's,  it  is  something  which  nobody 
else  can  imitate  with  impunity  ;  and  so,  like  theirs,  it  is  a  style 
which  in  the  history  of  literature  suggests  a  familiar  phase  of 


WALT  WHITMAN  477 

decline.  That  it  was  inevitable  you  will  feel  if  you  compare 
"  Ethiopia  Saluting  the  Colours  "  or  "  My  Captain  "  with  the 
unchecked  perversities  of  Whitman's  verse  in  general.  The 
"  Song  of  Myself,"  or  "  Crossing  Brooklyn  Ferry,"  which  we 
may  take  as  generally  representative  of  his  work,  are  so  reck 
lessly  misshapen  that  you  cannot  tell  whether  their  author  was 
able  to  write  with  amenity.  When  you  find  him,  however,  as 
in  those  lesser  pieces,  attempting  technical  form,  you  at  once 
feel  that  his  eccentricity  is  a  misfortune,  for  which  he  is  no 
more  to  blame  than  a  lame  man  for  limping,  or  a  deaf  and 
dumb  for  expressing  emotion  by  inarticulate  cries.  The  alter 
native  would  have  been  silence ;  and  Whitman  was  enough 
of  a  man  to  make  one  glad  that  he  never  dreamed  of  it. 

In  this  decadent  eccentricity  of  Whitman's  style  there  is 
again  something  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  this  country.  Amer 
ican  men  of  letters  have  generally  had  deep  artistic  conscience. 
This  trait  has  resulted,  for  one  thing,  in  making  the  short 
story,  an  essentially  organic  form  of  composition,  as  character 
istic  of  American  literature  as  the  straggling,  inorganic  three- 
volume  novel  is  of  English.  Now  and  again,  to  be  sure, 
American  men  of  letters  have  chosen  to  express  themselves 
in  quite  another  manner.  They  have  tried  to  reproduce  the 
native  dialects  of  the  American  people.  This  impulse  has 
resulted  in  at  least  one  masterpiece,  that  amazing  Odyssey  of 
the  Mississippi  to  which  Mark  Twain  gave  the  fantastic  name 
of "  Huckleberry  Finn."  As  we  remarked  of  the  "Biglow 
Papers,"  however,  this  "  dialect "  literature  of  America  often 
proves  on  analysis  more  elaborately  studied  than  orthodox 
work  by  the  same  writers.  Neither  the  "  Biglow  Papers  " 
nor  "  Huckleberry  Finn  "  could  have  been  produced  without 
an  artistic  conscience  as  strenuous  as  Irving's,  or  Poe's,  or 
Hawthorne's.  The  vagaries  of  Walt  Whitman,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  as  far  from  literary  conscience  as  the  animals  which 
he  somewhere  celebrates  are  from  unhappiness  or  respecta 
bility.  Whitman's  style,  then,  is  as  little  characteristic  of 


478  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

America  as  his  temper  is  of  traditional  American  democracy. 
One  can  see  why  the  decadent  taste  of  modern  Europe 
has  welcomed  him  so  much  more  ardently  than  he  has  ever 
been  welcomed  at  home ;  in  temper  and  in  style  he  was  an 
exotic  member  of  that  sterile  brotherhood  which  eagerly  greeted 
him  abroad.  In  America  his  oddities  were  more  eccentric 
than  they  would  have  been  anywhere  else. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  an  aspect  in  which  he  seems 
not  only  native  but  even  promising.  During  the  years  when 
his  observation  was  keenest,  and  his  temper  most  alert,  he 
lived  in  the  environment  from  which  our  future  America 
seems  most  likely  to  spring.  He  was  born  and  grew  up,  he 
worked  and  lived,  where  on  either  side  of  the  East  River  the 
old  American  towns  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn  were  develop 
ing  into  the  metropolis  which  is  still  too  young  to  possess  ripe 
traditions.  In  full  maturity  he  devoted  himself  to  army 
nursing,  —  the  least  picturesque  or  glorious,  and  the  most 
humanely  heroic,  service  which  he  could  have  rendered  his 
country  during  its  agony  of  civil  war.  In  that  Civil  War  the 
elder  America  perished ;  the  new  America  which  then  arose  is 
not  yet  mature  enough  for  artistic  record.  Whitman's  earthly 
experience,  then,  came  throughout  in  chaotic  times,  when  our 
past  had  faded  and  our  future  had  not  yet  sprung  into  being. 
Bewildering  confusion,  fused  by  the  accident  of  his  lifetime 
into  the  seeming  unity  of  a  momentary  whole,  was  the  only 
aspect  of  human  existence  which  could  be  afforded  him  by  the 
native  country  which  he  so  truly  loved.  For  want  of  other 
surroundings  he  was  content  to  seek  the  meaning  of  life  amid 
New  York  slums  and  dingy  suburban  country,  in  the  crossing 
of  Brooklyn  Ferry,  or  in  the  hospitals  which  strove  to  alle 
viate  the  drums  and  tramplings  of  civil  war.  His  lifelong 
eagerness  to  find  in  life  the  stuff  of  which  poetry  is  made  has 
brought  him,  after  all,  the  reward  he  would  most  have  cared  for. 
In  one  aspect  he  is  thoroughly  American.  The  spirit  of  his 
work  is  that  of  world-old  anarchy;  its  form  has  all  the  perverse 


WALT   WHITMAN 


479 


oddity  of  world-old  abortive  decadence  5  but  the  substance  of 
which  his  poems  are  made  —  their  imagery  as  distinguished 
from  their  form  or  their  spirit  —  comes  wholly  from  our 
native  country. 

In  this  aspect,  then,  though  probably  in  no  other,  he  may, 
after  all,  throw  light  on  the  future  of  literature  in  America. 
As  has  been  said  before,  "  He  is  uncouth,  inarticulate,  what 
ever  you  please  that  is  least  orthodox ;  yet,  after  all,  he  can 
make  you  feel  for  the  moment  how  even  the  ferry-boats  ply 
ing  from  New  York  to  Brooklyn  are  fragments  of  God's 
eternities.  Those  of  us  who  love  the  past  are  far  from 
sharing  his  confidence  in  the  future.  Surely,  however,  that  is 
no  reason  for  denying  the  miracle  that  he  has  wrought  by 
idealising  the  East  River.  The  man  who  has  done  this  is  the 
only  one  who  points  out  the  stuff  of  which  perhaps  the  new 
American  literature  of  the  future  may  in  time  be  made." 


Ill 

LITERATURE    IN    THE    SOUTH 

THE  Middle  States  and  New  England,  after  certain  literary- 
achievements,  seem  now  in  a  stage  either  of  decline  or  at  best 
of  preparation  for  some  literature  of  the  future.  The  other 
parts  of  the  country,  at  which  we  have  now  to  glance,  will  not 
detain  us  long.  However  copious  their  production,  it  has  not 
yet  afforded  us  much  of  permanent  value. 

Professor  Trent,  formerly  of  the  University  of  the  South, 
and  now  of  Columbia,  promises  a  book  concerning  Southern 
literature  which  will  be  welcome  to  every  American  student. 
Meanwhile,  the  best  authority  on  the  subject  is  his  admirable 
monograph  on  William  Gilmore  Simms,  in  the  American 
Men  of  Letters  Series.  The  impression  produced  by  reading 
this  work  is  confirmed  by  an  interesting  manuscript  lately 
prepared  by  another  Southern  gentleman.  In  the  winter  of 
1898,  Mr.  George  Stockton  Wills,  a  graduate  both  of  the 
University  of  North  Carolina  and  of  Harvard,  made  an  elab 
orate  study  of  the  literature  produced  in  the  South  before  the 
Civil  War.  A  thoroughly  trained  student,  he  brought  to 
light  and  clearly  defined  a  number  of  literary  figures  whose 
very  names  have  generally  been  forgotten.  The  more  you 
consider  these  figures,  however,  the  more  inevitable  seems 
the  neglect  into  which  they  have  fallen.  They  were  simple, 
sincere,  enthusiastic  writers,  mostly  of  verse ;  but  their  work, 
even  compared  only  with  the  less  important  Northern  work 
of  their  time,  seems  surprisingly  imitative.  Up  to  the  Civil 
War,  the  South  had  produced  hardly  any  writing  which 
expressed  more  than  a  pleasant  sense  that  standard  models 
are  excellent. 


THE  SOUTH  481 

A  ripe  example  of  this  may  be  found  in  Stedman  and 
Hutchinson's  u  Library  of  American  Literature."  The  most 
gifted  and  accomplished  of  Southern  poets  was  Sidney  Lanier ; 
and  among  his  more  impressive  poems  Stedman  and  Hutchin- 
son  select  one  entitled  "  The  Revenge  of  Hamish."  Lanier,  a 
native  of  Georgia,  never  strayed  much  farther  from  his  birth 
place  than  Baltimore ;  yet  this  u  Revenge  of  Hamish  "  is  a 
passionate  account  of  how  the  cruelly  abused  retainer  of  a 
Highland  chieftain  murders  his  master's  son  after  fiercely 
humiliating  the  father.  In  other  words,  the  substance  of  this 
characteristic  production  of  our  most  powerful  Southern  poet 
comes  straight  from  the  romantic  mountains  brought  into  liter 
ature  by  Walter  Scott.  Not  a  line  of  the  poem  suggests  that 
it  proceeds  from  our  own  Southern  States.  Unlike  the  "  Re 
venge  of  Hamish,"  itself  admirable,  the  imitative  poetry  of 
the  South  is  generally  commonplace  and  conventional. 

For  this  comparative  literary  lifelessness  there  is  obvious 
historical  reason.  The  difference  between  the  Southern  clim 
ate  and  the  Northern  has  often  been  dwelt  on ;  so  has  the 
difference  between  the  social  systems  of  the  two  parts  of  the 
country.  It  has  often  been  remarked,  too,  that  the  oligarchic 
system  of  the  South  developed  powerful  politicians.  At  the 
time  of  the  Revolution,  for  example,  our  most  eminent  states 
men  were  from  Virginia;  and  when  the  Civil  War  came, 
though  the  economic  superiority  of  the  North  was  bound 
to  win,  the  political  ability  of  the  South  seemed  generally 
superior.  One  plain  cause  of  these  facts  has  not  been  much 
emphasised. 

From  the  beginning,  the  North  was  politically  free  and 
'essentially  democratic ;  its  social  distinctions  were  nothing 
like  so  rigid  as  those  which  have  generally  diversified  civilised 
society.  There  was  no  mob ;  the  lower  class  of  New  Eng 
land  produced  Whittier.  In  a  decent  Yankee  village,  to  this 
day,  you  need  not  lock  your  doors  at  night ;  and  when  crime 
turns  up  in  the  North,  as  it  does  with  increasing  frequency, 

3« 


482  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

you  can  still  trust  the  police  to  attend  to  it.  In  the  South,  at 
least  from  the  moment  when  slavery  established  itself,  a  to 
tally  different  state  of  affairs  prevailed.  The  African  slaves, 
constantly  increasing  in  number,  seemed  the  most  dangerous 
lower  class  which  had  ever  faced  an  English-speaking  gov 
ernment.  The  agricultural  conditions  of  Southern  life  mean 
while  prevented  population  from  gathering  in  considerable 
centres.  As  slavery  developed,  the  South  accordingly  grew 
to  be  a  region  where  a  comparatively  small  governing  class, 
the  greater  part  of  whom  lived  separately  on  large  country 
places,  felt  themselves  compelled,  by  the  risk  of  servile  insur 
rection,  to  devote  their  political  energies  to  the  rigid  main 
tenance  of  established  order.  Whether  slavery  was  really  so 
dangerous  as  people  thought  may  be  debatable ;  there  can  be 
no  question  that  people  living  in  such  circumstances  could 
hardly  help  believing  it  so.  However  human,  native  Africans 
are  still  savage ;  and  although,  long  before  the  Civil  War,  the 
Southern  slaves  had  shown  such  sensitiveness  to  comparatively 
civilised  conditions  as  to  have  lost  their  superficial  savagery, 
and  indeed  as  still  to  warrant,  in  many  hopeful  minds,  even  the 
franchise  which  was  ultimately  granted  them,  the  spectre  of 
darkest  Africa  loomed  behind  them  all.  Surrounded  by  an 
increasing  servile  population  of  unalterable  aliens,  then,  in 
whose  increase  their  fatal  social  system  gave  them  irresistible 
interest,  the  ruling  classes  of  our  elder  South  dreaded  political 
experiment  to  a  degree  almost  incomprehensible  in  the  North, 
where  the  social  conditions  permitted  men  of  power  to  neglect 
politics  for  private  business.  If  any  phase  of  the  established 
Southern  order  were  altered,  no  Southern  mind  dared  guess 
what  might  happen ;  it  might  be  such  infernal  horrors  as  ha* 
devastated  San  Domingo.  More  and  more,  then,  the  ablest 
men  of  the  South  naturally  tended  to  concentrate  their  ener 
gies  on  politics,  and  in  politics  to  develop  increasingly  conser 
vative  temper. 

The  natural  result  was  such  as  conservatism  would  pro- 


THE  SOUTH  483 

duce  anywhere.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  Civil  War  a  normal 
Southerner  was  far  less  changed  from  his  emigrant  ancestor 
than  was  any  New  England  Yankee.  Compared  with  what 
happened  in  Europe  between  1620  and  1860  there  was  little 
alteration  even  in  our  Northern  States ;  in  the  South  the  past 
lingered  even  more  tenaciously.  A  Southern  trait  —  familiar 
because  it  lends  itself  so  pleasantly  to  burlesque  —  is  a  com 
placent  opinion  that  Southerners  descend  from  Cavaliers,  and 
Yankees  from  the  socially  inferior  Roundheads.  Though  this 
fact  is  more  than  debatable,  the  Southern  belief  in  it  indicates 
a  truth;  at  least  up  to  the  Civil  War  the  personal  temper  of  the 
better  classes  in  the  South  remained  more  like  that  of  the  better 
classes  in  seventeenth-century  England  than  anything  else  in 
the  modern  world.  Concrete  examples  of  this  may  be  found 
in  two  or  three  facts  on  which  we  have  already  touched. 
When  Preston  Brooks  struck  Charles  Sumner  in  the  United 
States  Senate,  for  example,  Brooks  exhibited  traits  which 
neither  England  nor  the  Northern  States  had  quite  under 
stood  since  Cromwell's  Commonwealth.  Again,  the  ablest 
legal  presentation  of  the  constitutional  claims  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy  was  the  "War  between  the  States,"  published 
before  1870  by  Mr.  Alexander  Hamilton  Stephens,  of  Georgia. 
Mr.  Stephens  was  an  accomplished  lawyer,  a  statesman,  and  a 
gentleman.  Until  the  moment  of  secession  he  endeavoured 
to  preserve  the  Union  on  grounds  of  expediency  ;  but  he 
believed  in  State  Rights,  and  he  reluctantly  but  honestly  gave 
himself  to  the  Confederacy,  of  which  he  became  Vice-Presi- 
dent.  After  the  war,  he  wrote  this  book,  defending  his  course 
on  constitutional  grounds.  His  serious  political  argument  was 
cast  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue,  with  three  interlocutors,  which 
proceeds  through  two  large  volumes.  Now,  in  classical  times 
dialogue  was  a  familiar  form  of  serious  exposition.  Plato 
wrote  dialogues,  and  Cicero  wrote  them,  and  later  Plutarch  ; 
and  when  the  Renaissance  revived  classical  tradition  in  Italy, 
people  again  took  to  arguing  in  dialogue  form,  because  clas- 


484  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

sical  masters  had  so  argued.  In  England  this  mannerism  was 
in  full  feather  when  Dryden  wrote  about  Dramatic  Poesy  and 
Addison  of  Ancient  Medals ;  by  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  it  had  almost  died  out  there.  More  than  a  century 
later  it  still  seemed  normal  to  the  most  accomplished  states 
man  of  Georgia.  As  a  rhetorician,  Mr.  Stephens  lingered  in  a 
stage  nearly  outgrown  in  England  before  Queen  Anne  yielded 
the  throne  to  the  House  of  Brunswick.  A  trivial  symptom, 
perhaps ;  but  a  true  one.  In  the  development  of  national 
character,  even  the  North  of  America  has  lagged  behind 
England ;  and  the  South  has  lagged  behind  the  North. 
Long  ago  we  saw  how  our  first  great  civil  war  —  the  Amer 
ican  Revolution  —  sprang  almost  inevitably  from  mutual  mis 
understandings,  involved  in  the  different  rates  of  development 
of  England  and  of  her  American  colonies.  Something  of  the 
same  kind,  we  can  see  now,  underlay  the  Civil  War  which 
once  threatened  the  future  of  the  American  Union. 

Of  course  the  South  was  never  destitute  of  powerful  or  of 
cultivated  minds  ;  and  from  the  beginning  there  were  South 
ern  books.  A  rather  fantastic  habit  includes  among  these  the 
voyages  of  Captain  John  Smith  and  the  Elizabethan  transla 
tion  of  Ovid  by  George  Sandys,  a  portion  of  which  was  made 
on  the  banks  of  the  James  River ;  and  there  are  various  old 
historical  writings  from  the  South.  The  best  of  them  seem 
the  posthumously  published  manuscripts  of  William  Byrd  of 
Westover,  a  Virginian  gentleman  who  lived  from  1664  to 
1744,  who  had  considerable  social  experience  in  England,  and 
whose  style  is  very  like  that  of  his  contemporary  Englishmen 
of  quality.  In  the  fact  that  Byrd's  records  of  contemporary 
history  were  written  for  his  private  pleasure  by  a  great  landed 
proprietor,  and  that  they  saw  the  light  only  when  he  had  been 
nearly  a  century  in  his  grave,  there  is  something  characteris 
tic  of  the  South.  Southern  gentlemen  of  an  intellectual  turn 
collected  considerable  libraries  ;  but  these  libraries,  chiefly  of 
serious  standard  literature,  tended  more  and  more  to  become 


THE  SOUTH  485 

traditional  repositories  of  culture.  Southern  taste  commanded 
each  generation  to  preserve  its  culture  unaltered,  much  as 
political  necessity  compelled  the  South  to  keep  unaltered  its 
government  and  its  society. 

At  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  of  course,  the  development 
of  political  intelligence  in  the  South  produced  powerful  po 
litical  writing.  In  Professor  Tyler's  admirable  "  Literary 
History  of  the  American  Revolution "  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  which  came  straight  from  the  pen  of  the 
Virginian  Jefferson,  is  treated  as  a  literary  masterpiece.  So 
in  certain  aspects  it  is,  —  the  masterpiece  of  a  school  in  which 
Jefferson,  though  perhaps  the  principal  figure,  was  no  more 
solitary  than  Emerson  was  in  New  England  Transcenden 
talism.  As  in  the  North,  too,  this  political  writing  tended 
during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  develop 
into  rhetorical  oratory ;  and  though  among  American  orators 
Webster  and  Choate  and  Everett  and  their  New  England 
contemporaries  seem  the  best,  no  special  study  of  American 
oratory  can  neglect  such  men  as  Calhoun,  Hayne,  or  Henry 
Clay.  Oratory,  however,  is  not  pure  letters,  but  rather  a 
phase  of  public  life ;  and  our  concern  is  chiefly  with  litera 
ture.  A  sufficient  indication  of  the  literary  work  of  the  South 
may  be  found  in  the  chronological  tables  which  form  the 
appendix  of  Mr.  Pancoast's  excellent  little  u  Introduction 
to  American  Literature." 

The  names  which  he  gives  after  that  of  Jefferson  are  the 
following :  George  Washington,  to  whose  "  Farewell  Ad 
dress  "  he  accords  full  literary  recognition  ;  William  Wirt, 
a  Virginia  lawyer,  for  some  years  Attorney-General  of  the 
United  States,  to  whose  elaborately  rhetorical  u  Life  of  Pat 
rick  Henry "  he  gives  a  place  among  standard  American 
biographers  ;  John  Marshall,  the  most  eminent  Chief  Justice 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  also  a  Virginian, 
whose  place  in  literature  according  to  Mr.  Pancoast  is  earned 
by  his  celebrated  "  Life  of  Washington  ;  "  Edward  Coate 


486  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

Pinckney,  a  Maryland  lawyer  and  professor,  who  died  young 
in  1828,  and  who  had  published  certain  volumes  of  poetry 
which  reveal  a  true  lyric  gift  ;  Henry  Clay,  whose  position 
in  literature  is  due  to  his  oratory  ; 


Edgar  Allan  Poe  ;  Audubon,  who,  like  Poe,  seems  Southern 
only  by  courtesy  ;  John  Pendleton  Kennedy  ;  Augustus  B. 
Longstreet  ;  Charles  E.  Gayarre  ;  Francis  Lieber,  a  German 
by  birth,  and  for  his  last  twenty  years  an  eminent  resident 
of  New  York  ;  John  Esten  Cooke  ;  Paul  Hamilton  P^a^e  ; 
Henry  Timrod  ;  and  Sidire^I^anier.  Mr.  Pancoast  mentions 
too  the  names  of  a  few  writers  still  happily  living  ;  and  he 
remarks  as  notable  Southern  periodicals  the  u  Southern  Re 
view,"  which  was  published  at  Charleston  in  1828  and  had 
a  short  life  ;  the  "  Southern  Literary  Messenger,"  which  was 
published  in  Richmond  from  1835  to  1864;  and  the  "South 
ern  Quarterly  Review,"  which  was  established  at  Charleston 
in  1848,  remained  for  several  years  under  the  editorship  of 
William  Gilmore  Simms,  and  came  to  an  end  in  1856. 

Of  these  names  the  earlier  clearly  belong  to  the  traditions 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Several  of  the  later  are  already 
almost  forgotten.  Kennedy,  a  Maryland  man  eminent  in 
political  life,  was  the  author  of  a  novel  called  "  Horse-Shoe 
Robinson."  Longstreet,  a  Georgia  man  born  in  1790,  a 
graduate  of  Yale,  a  lawyer,  a  judge,  a  Methodist  minister, 
and  the  president  of  two  or  three  colleges,  contributed  to 
various  newspapers  sketches  of  Southern  life,  which  in  1840 
were  collected  into  a  volume  called  u  Georgia  Scenes." 
These,  which  had  a  considerable  success,  and  have  lately  been 
reprinted,  are  pleasant  prototypes  of  the  local  short  stories 
which  during  the  past  fifteen  or  twenty  years  have  so  gener 
ally  appeared  in  various  parts  of  the  country.  Gayarre,  a 
New  Orleans  lawyer  born  in  1805,  survived  until  lately. 
His  works  on  the  history  of  his  native  State,  published  be 
tween  1847  and  T^54?  and  culminating  in  a  three-volume 
M  History  of  Louisiana,"  published  in  1866,  are  respectable 


THE  SOUTH  487 

and  authoritative  local  histories.  Late  in  life  he  produced  one 
or  two  novels  and  comedies  which  have  been  kindly  spoken 
of,  but  which  were  never  widely  read.  Cooke  of  Virginia, 
a  lawyer  and  a  Confederate  soldier,  who  was  born  in  1830 
and  died  in  1866,  devoted  the  chief  activity  of  his  mature 
years  to  literature,  and  early  produced  "  The  Virginia  Come 
dians,"  which  is  still  pleasantly  mentioned.  He  wrote  cer 
tain  other  romances  connected  with  his  native  State  before 
and  after  the  Civil  War.  And  so  on.  It  is  hardly  too  much 
to  say  that  if  these  sporadic  writers  had  not  been  Southerners, 
they  would  have  been  even  more  forgotten  than  they  are, 
along  with  the  Literati  momentarily  enshrined  in  1846  by 
Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

Poe  himself,  as  we  decided  long  ago,  is  Southern  only  by 
courtesy ;  he  relates  himself  more  closely  to  literary  New 
York  at  the  moment  when  its  old  traditions  were  passing 
into  the  Knickerbocker  School.  In  Mr.  Pancoast's  list,  then, 
there  are  only  four  Southern  names  which  now  seem  of  any 
literary  importance  ;  and  of  these  only  one  stands  for  con 
siderable  work  before  the  Civil  War. 

This  is  that  of  William  Gilmore  Simms,  whose  Life,  by- 
Professor  Trent,  remains,  as  we  have  seen,  the  most  interest 
ing  and  suggestive  book  concerning  our  Southern  literature. 
Simms  was  born  in  1806  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina.  Of 
this  most  typical  Southern  city  Professor  Trent  gives  an  ad 
mirable  sketch.  If  any  one  spot  can  be  held  completely 
characteristic  of  a  region  so  extended  as  the  elder  South, 
that  spot  was  Charleston,  —  a  fact  historically  evident  when 
we  remember  that  from  Charleston  came  the  Nullification 
movement  of  1832,  and  that  thirty  years  later  the  bombard 
ment  of  Fort  Sumter  by  Charleston  militia  began  our  armed 
conflict.  In  Simms's  youth  the  social  hierarchy  of  Charleston 
was  so  rigid  as  to  make  Northern  social  distinctions  seem  the 
acme  of  human  equality ;  and  meantime  the  general  con 
servatism  of  Southern  temper  was  in  Charleston  at  its  most 


488  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

conservative.  Simms  was  born  there  in  a  socially  lower  class. 
He  had  little  education ;  as  a  boy  he  was  apprenticed  to  an 
apothecary;  later  he  began  the  study  of  law.  In  1825  ne 
made  an  excursion  to  the  southwest  to  visit  his  father,  who 
had  removed  thither,  and  who  strongly  urged  him  not  to  return 
to  Charleston,  where  his  social  obscurity  would  almost  certainly 
interfere  with  his  ambition.  Simms,  however,  who  was  in  love 
with  a  Charleston  girl,  insisted  on  going  home;  at  the  age  of 
twenty-one  he  married  a  lady  of  social  position  in  no  way 
superior  to  his  own ;  and  a  year  later  he  published  a  volume 
of  commonplace  poetry.  From  that  time  he  was  an  ex 
tremely  prolific  writer.  In  a  partial  bibliography  of  his  work 
Professor  Trent  mentions  no  less  than  eighty-seven  volumes 
from  his  pen  between  1827  and  his  death  in  1870.  His  first 
wife  died  early;  by  1836  he  had  so  improved  his  condition  that 
a  second  marriage  happily  allied  him  to  the  family  of  a  consider 
able  planter.  From  that  time  until  the  Civil  War,  though  his  per 
sonal  sympathies  never  quite  agreed  with  those  of  the  traditional 
aristocracy,  his  social  position  was  more  and  more  secure. 

The  immense  bulk  of  Simms's  writings  —  for  forty  years* 
he  produced  books  at  the  rate  of  more  than  two  volumes  a 
year,  and  he  did  incalculable  journalistic  work,  too  —  in 
volved  hasty  and  careless  .composition;  and  the  romances,  to 
which  his  popularity  was  chiefly  due,  are  not  only  careless  but 
obviously  affected  by  both  Cooper  and  Scott,  not  to  speak  of 
such  minor  influences  as  those  of  William  Godwin  and  per 
haps  of  Brockden  Brown.  In  their  day  some  of  them  were 
widely  popular  ;  at  the  present  time  even  their  names  are  al 
most  forgotten.  For  all  their  careless  haste,  however,  they  in 
dicate  uncommon  vigour  of  temperament,  and  amid  the  obvious 
conventions  of  their  plots  and  characters  they  constantly  reveal, 
like  the  earlier  romances  of  Brockden  Brown  and  of  Cooper,  a 
true  sense  of  the  background  in  which  the  scenes  were  laid. 

Up  to  the  time  of  the   Civil  War,  beyond   much  question, 
Simms  was  by  far  the  most  considerable  literary  man  whom 


THE  SOUTH  489 

the  Southern  States  produced.  In  South  Carolina  he  was  long 
recognised  as  the  principal  figure  of  a  literary  epoch  contem 
porary  with  that  which  in  New  England  produced  Emerson 
and  Thoreau,  and  Whittier,  and  Longfellow,  and  Lowell,  and 
Holmes,  and  Hawthorne.  This  collocation  of  names  is 
enough.  Our  chief  Southern  man  of  letters  before  the  Civil 
War  was  at  best  one  who  did  vigorous,  careless  work  of  the 
sort  which  had  produced  more  lasting  monuments  in  the  New 
York  of  Fenimore  Cooper.  Cooper's  work,  we  have  seen, 
was  virtually  complete  in  1832;  and  Simms's  did  not  begin 
until  1833.  In  literature  as  in  temper  the  South  lagged 
behind  the  North. 

Simms  lived  through  the  Civil  War.  An  ardent,  sincere 
Secessionist,  he  suffered  greatly  for  the  cause  to  which  he  was 
conscientiously  devoted.  When  the  war  broke  out,  however, 
he  was  already  fifty-five  years  old.  His  work  as  a  whole, 
then,  is  not,  like  that  of  the  other  Southerners  on  whom  we 
shall  touch,  saturated  with  the  spirit  of  the  tragic  years 
which  brought  to  its  end  the  old  civilisation  of  their  native 
region.  Solemn  enough  to  the  uninvaded  North,  the  war 
meant  more  than  Northern  imagination  has  yet  realised  to 
those  Southern  States  into  whose  heart  its  horrors  were  slowly, 
surely  carried.  Such  a  time  was  too  intense  for  much  ex 
pression  ;  it  was  a  moment  rather  for  heroic  action  ;  and  in 
South  and  North  alike  it  found  armies  of  heroes.  Of  these 
there  are  few  more  stirring  records  than  a  simple  ballad  made 
by  Dr.  Ticknor,  of  Georgia,  concerning  a  Confederate  private 
soldier  :  — 

"  LITTLE  GIFFEN. 

"  Out  of  the  focal  and  foremost  fire, 
Out  of  the  hospital  walls  as  dire; 
Smitten  of  grape-shot  and  gangrene, 
(Eighteenth  battle,  and  he  sixteen  ! ) 
Spectre  !  such  as  you  seldom  see, 
Little  Giffen,  of  Tennessee  ! 


490  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

"  '  Take  him  and  welcome  ! '  the  surgeons  said ; 
Little  the  doctor  can  help  the  dead  ! 
So  we  took  him  ;  and  brought  him  where 
The  balm  was  sweet  in  the  summer  air ; 
And  we  laid  him  down  on  a  wholesome  bed  — 
Utter  Lazarus,  heel  to  head  ! 

"  And  we  watched  the  war  with  abated  breath,  — 
Skeleton  Boy  against  skeleton  Death. 
Months  of  torture,  how  many  such  ? 
Weary  weeks  of  the  stick  and  crutch  ; 
And  still  a  glint  of  the  steel-blue  eye 
Told  of  a  spirit  that  would  n't  die, 

"  And  did  n't.     Nay,  more,  in  death's  despite 
The  crippled  skeleton  learned  to  write. 
«  Dear  Mother,'  at  first,  of  course  ;  and  then 
*  Dear  Captain,'  inquiring  about  the  men. 
Captain's  answer  :  '  Of  eighty-and-five, 
Giffen  and  I  are  left  alive.' 

"  Word  of  gloom  from  the  war,  one  day  ; 
Johnston  pressed  at  the  front,  they  say. 
Little  Giffen  was  up  and  away; 
A  tear  —  his  first  —  as  he  bade  good-bye, 
Dimmed  the  glint  of  his  steel-blue  eye. 
'  I  '11  write,  if  spared  1 '     There  was  news  of  the  fight ; 
But  none  of  Giffen.     He  did  not  write. 

"  I  sometimes  fancy  that,  were  I  king 
Of  the  princely  Knights  of  the  Golden  Ring, 
With  the  song  of  the  minstrel  in  mine  ear, 
And  the  tender  legend  that  trembles  here, 
I  'd  give  the  best  on  his  bended  knee, 
The  whitest  soul  of  my  chivalry, 
For  'Little  Giffen,'  of  Tennessee." 

Dr.  Ticknor,  who  survived  till  1874,  was  not  thought  im 
portant  enough  for  record  in  Mr.  Pancoast's  chronological 
tables.  His  poems  were  edited,  however,  by  a  friend  who, 
though  he  never  wrote  anything  so  powerful  as  "  Little-  Giffen  " 
was  deservedly  recognised  by  Mr.  Pancoast.  This  was  Paul 
Hamilton  Hayne,  a  member  of  that  distinguished  South 
Carolina  family  which  produced  the  Senator  whose  speech  on 


THE  SOUTH  49I 

Nullification  in  1830  elicited  Webster's  famous  reply.  Paul 
Hayne  was  born  in  this  very  year  when  his  uncle  and  Webster 
were  debating  in  the  Senate.  He  studied  for  the  bar,  but 
devoted  himself  chiefly  to  literature  at  a  time  when  the  lit 
erary  activity  of  Charleston  was  dominated  by  Simms.  When 
the  Civil  War  came  he  entered  the  Southern  army  ;  he  broke 
down  his  health  in  the  service.  The  war  left  him,  too,  ruined 
in  property ;  but  he  survived,  working  hard  at  letters  in  the 
Georgia  country,  until  1886. 

Professor  Trent's  "  Life  of  Simms  "  gives  us  many  glimpses 
of  Hayne,  showing  how  eagerly  he  strove  to  maintain  the 
literary  dignity  of  the  region  which  he  passionately  loved.  A 
man  of  gentler  origin  than  Simms,  and  distinctly  better  edu 
cated,  his  temper  seems  more  in  sympathy  with  the  formal 
traditions  of  the  South  Carolina  gentry.  It  shows  too  an 
academic  sense  of  conventional  standards^  In  this  aspect 
Hayne  had  something  in  common  with  the  New  England 
poets.  Certainly,  compared  with  such  verses  as  "  Little 
GifFen,"  and  with  the  best  work  of  Timrod  and  of  Sidney 
Lanier,  his  poetry  seems  deficient  in  individuality  and  passion ; 
yet  whoever  will  turn  only  to  Stedman  and  Hutchinson  must 
feel  in  Hayne  a  touch  of  genuineness  almost  unknown  in 
the  South  until  the  fatal  days  of  civil  war. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Hayne  that  he  was  held  by  his  ad 
mirers,  and  probably  liked  to  be  held,  an  excellent  maker  of 
sonnets.  The  praise  is  excessive.  Excellent  sonnets  are 
rare  in  the  whole  range  of  literature.  The  fact  that  Hayne 
loved  to  express  himself  in  this  studied  and  deliberate  form, 
however,  and  that  he  managed  it  well  enough  to  be  remarked, 
means  that  he  was  at  heart  not  only  a  man  of  deep  emotional 
impulse,  but  an  artist.  The  sonnet  which  Stedman  and  Hutch 
inson  have  chosen  to  represent  him  is  not  faultless  ;  nor  is 
lack  of  lyric  smoothness  its  only  fault.  In  substance,  like  so 
much  American  poetry,  it  is  commonplace ;  in  style  it  is 
rather  reminiscent  of  many  admirable  models  than  strongly 


492  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

individual;  but  it  has  genuine  fervour.     Few  American  sonnets 
seem  more  sincere.    "Fate  or  God? "  he  calls  it ;  and  here  it  is  : 

"  Beyond  the  record  of  all  eldest  things, 
Beyond  the  rule  and  regions  of  past  time, 
From  out  Antiquity's  hoary-headed  rime, 
Looms  the  dread  phantom  of  a  King  of  kings  : 
Round  his  vast  brow  the  glittering  circlet  clings 
Of  a  thrice  royal  crown ;  beneath  Him  climb, 
O'er  Atlantean  limbs  and  breast  sublime, 
The  sombre  splendours  of  mysterious  wings  ; 
Deep  calms  of  measureless  power,  in  awful  state, 
Gird  and  uphold  Him;  a  miraculous  rod, 
To  heal  or  smite,  arms  His  infallible  hands; 
Known  in  all  ages,  worshipped  in  all  lands, 
Doubt  names  this  half-embodied  mystery  —  Fate, 
While  Faith,  with  lowliest  reverence,  whispers  —  God!" 

In  1873  Hayne  edited  the  poems  of  his  friend  Henry  Tim- 
rod.  These  have  maintained  such  reputation  that  a  new  and 
enlarged  edition  has  lately  appeared.  In  the  introduction  to 
this  collection  one  can  feel  throughout  the  provincial  note  of 
Southern  literary  temper.  Its  style  is  amiably  florid  to  a 
degree  which  in  the  North  would  have  always  seemed  a  little 
ridiculous  ;  so,  in  spite  of  amiably  modest  temper,  its  superla 
tive  estimate  of  Timrod's  merit  makes  his  work  at  first  glance 
seem  less  noteworthy  than  it  really  is.  He  had  in  him  the 
stuff  of  which  poetry  is  made,  and  the  circumstances  of  his 
career  made  some  of  his  expression  of  it  admirable.  Timrod 
was  born  in  Charleston  in  1829,  the  son  of  an  artisan  who 
was  known  as  the  Poet  Mechanic.  He  was  further  than 
Simms,  then,  from  belonging  to  the  hereditary  gentry  of  South 
Carolina  ;  but  he  had  inherited  love  for  literature.  He  studied 
for  a  while  at  the  University  of  Georgia  ;  he  then  turned  to 
the  law;  and  for  some  time  before  the  Civil  War  he  was 
private  tutor  in  a  gentleman's  family.  During  the  war  he 
was  a  journalist.  At  the  burning  of  Columbia  during  Sher 
man's  march  to  the  sea  his  property  was  totally  destroyed ; 


THE  SOUTH  493 

in  1867  his  consequent  poverty  brought  to  an  end  a  life  which 
was  never  physically  robust. 

Among   Timrod's    poems,  one,  "  The  Cotton   Boll,"  has 
emerged  from  the  rest.     It  begins  thus :  — 

"  While  I  recline 
At  ease  beneath 
This  immemorial  pine, 
Small  sphere  ! 

(By  dusky  fingers  brought  this  morning  here 
And  shown  with  boastful  smiles), 
I  turn  thy  cloven  sheath, 
Through  which  the  soft  white  fibres  peer, 
That,  with  their  gossamer  bands, 
Unite,  like  love,  the  sea  divided  lands, 
And  slowly,  thread  by  thread, 
Draw  forth  the  folded  strands, 
Than  which  the  trembling  line, 
By  whose  frail  help  yon  startled  spider  fled 
Down  the  tall  spear-grass  from  his  swinging  bed, 
Is  scarce  more  fine  ; 
And  as  the  tangled  skein 
Unravels  in  my  hands, 
Betwixt  me  and  the  noonday  light 
A  veil  seems  lifted,  and  for  miles  and  miles 
The  landscape  broadens  on  my  sight, 
As  in  the  little  boll,  there  lurked  a  spell 
Like  that  which  in  the  ocean  shell, 
With  mystic  sound 

Breaks  down  the  narrow  walls  that  hem  us  round, 
And  turns  some  city  lane 
Into  the  restless  main, 
With  all  his  capes  and  isles  !  " 

The  eccentric  irregularity  of  this  laboured  verse  cannot  dis 
guise  its  lyric  note ;  and  the  sense  of  Nature  which  it  reveals 
is  as  fine,  as  true,  and  as  simple  as  that  which  makes  so  nearly^ 
excellent  Whittier's  poems  about  New^England  landscapes. 
And  so  "  The  Cotton  Boll"  proceeds,  turning  into  poetry 
what  might  seem  a  very  commonplace  motive,  —  namely,  re 
flections  on  the  various  blessings  brought  to  mankind  by  the 
chief  staple  of  the  South.  The  closing  lines  of  the  poem, 


494      THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

which  touch  on  the  Civil  War,   strike   another  note,  and  a 
stirring  :  — 

"  As  men  who  labour  in  that  mine 

Of  Cornwall,  hollowed  out  beneath  the  bed 

Of  ocean,  when  a  storm  rolls  overhead, 

Hear  the  dull  booming  of  the  world  of  brine 

Above  them,  and  a  mighty  muffled  roar 

Of  winds  and  waters,  yet  toil  calmly  on, 

And  split  the  rock,  and  pile  the  massive  ore, 

Or  carve  a  niche,  or  shape  the  arched  roof ; 

So  I,  as  calmly,  weave  my  woof 

Of  song,  chanting  the  days  to  come, 

Unsilenced,  though  the  quiet  summer  air 

Stirs  with  the  bruit  of  battles,  and  each  dawn 

Wakes  from  its  starry  silence  to  the  hum 

Of  many  gathering  armies.     Still, 

In  that  we  sometimes  hear, 

Upon  the  Northern  winds,  the  voice  of  woe 

Not  wholly  drowned  in  triumph,  though  I  know 

The  end  must  crown  us,  and  a  few  brief  years 

Dry  all  our  tears, 

I  may  not  sing  too  gladly.     To  Thy  will 

Resigned,  O  Lord  !  we  cannot  all  forget 

That  there  is  much  even  Victory  must  regret. 

And,  therefore,  not  too  long 

From  the  great  burthen  of  our  country's  wrong 

Delay  our  just  release  ! 

And,  if  it  may  be,  save 

These  sacred  fields  of  peace 

From  stain  of  patriot  or  of  hostile  blood ! 

Oh,  help  us,  Lord !  to  roll  the  crimson  flood 

Back  on  its  course,  and,  while  our  banners  wing 

Northward,  strike  with  us !  till  the  Goth  shall  cling 

To  his  own  blasted  altar-stones,  and  crave 

Mercy;  and  we  shall  grant  it,  and  dictate 

The  lenient  future  of  his  fate 

There,  where  some  rotting  ships  and  crumbling  quays 

Shall  one  day  mark  the  Port  which  ruled  the  Western  seas." 

Our  Civil  War  brought  forth  no  lines  more  fervent,  and 
few  whose  fervour  rises  to  such  lyric  height.  In  the  days  of 
conflict,  North  regarded  South,  and  South  North,  as  the  incar- 


THE  SOUTH 


495 


nation  of  evil,  Time,  however,  has  begun  its  healing  work  ; 
at  last  our  country  begins  to  understand  itself  better  than  ever 
before ;  and  as  our  new  patriotism  strengthens,  we  cannot 
prize  too  highly  such  verses  as  Whittier's,  honestly  phrasing 
noble  Northern  sentiment,  or  as  Timrod's,  who  with  equal 
honesty  phrased  the  noble  sentiment  of  the  South.  A  litera 
ture  which  in  the  same  years  could  produce  works  so  utterly 
antagonistic  in  superficial  sentiment,  and  yet  so  harmonious  in 
their  common  sincerity  and  loftiness  of  feeling,  is  a  literature 
from  which  riches  may  come. 

We  can  hardly  have  read  even  this  short  extract  from 
Timrod,  however,  without  feeling,  along  with  his  lyric  quality, 
a  lack  of  articulation  which  prevents  his  work  from  excel 
lence.  A  similar  trait  appears  in  the  work  of  the  most 
memorable  man  of  letters  as  yet  produced  by  the  South, — 
Sidney  Lanier.  Born  at  Macon,  Georgia,  in  1842,  Lanier 
graduated  from  a  Georgia  college  in  1860,  and  at  the  out 
break  of  the  Civil  War  he  enlisted  as  a  Confederate  volun 
teer.  Towards  the  close  of  the  war  he  was  taken  prisoner ; 
the  physical  hardships  of  his  military  experience  produced  a 
weakness  of  the  lungs  from  which  he  never  recovered.  After 

D 

the  war  he  was  for  a  while  a  school-teacher,  and  for  a  while 
a  lawyer  in  Alabama  and  Georgia.  In  1873  he  removed  to 
Baltimore,  where  at  first  he  supported  himself  by  playing  the 
flute  in  a  symphony  orchestra.  Soon,  however,  he  became 
known  as  a  man  of  letters;  and  in  1879  he  was  made  a 
lecturer  on  English  literature  at  Johns  Hopkins  University. 
He  survived  this  appointment  two  years,  dying  in  1881. 

A  true  lyric  artist,  Lanier  was  a  skilful  musician,  and  he 
wrote  genuine  poetry.  The  circumstances  of  his  life,  how 
ever,  were  such  as  to  preclude  a  very  high  degree  of  technical 
training,  and,  at  least  until  after  the  war  had  broken  his 
health,  much  systematic  study.  What  he  accomplished  under 
these  circumstances  is  astonishing.  He  was  never  popular, 
and  probably  never  will  be.  His  quality  was  too  fine  to  ap- 


496  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

peal  to  the  general  public ;  his  training  was  too  imperfect  to 
make  his  critical  work  or  his  theories  of  aesthetics  seem  im 
portant  to  technical  scholars.  He  was  compelled  besides  to 
write  more  than  was  good  for  him,  —  at  least  one  novel,  for 
example,  and  versions  for  boys  of  much  old  romance,  concern 
ing  King  Arthur,  and  the  heroes  of  Froissart,  and  the  Welsh 
tales  of  the  "  Mabinogion,"  and  Percy's  "  Reliques."  He 
wrote  nothing  more  characteristic,  however,  than  that  "  Sci 
ence  of  English  Verse  "  which  comprises  the  substance  of  his 
first  course  of  lectures  at  Johns  Hopkins.  To  state  his  serioiis 
and  earnest  system  of  dogmatic  poetics,  would  take  too  long. 
In  brief,  he  believed  the  function  of  poetry  to  be  far  nearer 
to  that  of  music  than  it  has  generally  been  held.  The  emo 
tional  effect  of  poetry  he  declared  to  arise  literally  from  its 
sound  quite  as  much  as  from  its  meaning;  and  the  poetry  which 
he  wrote  was  decidedly  affected  by  this  deliberate,  sincere,  but 
somewhat  cramping  theory.  Even  in  his  earlier  verse  you 
feel  this  impediment.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  song  which 
he  is  said  to  have  made  in  1866. 

"  NIGHT  AND  DAY. 

"  The  innocent,  sweet  Day  is  dead. 
Dark  Night  hath  slain  her  in  her  bed. 
O,  Moors  are  as  fierce  to  kill  as  to  wed ! 

—  Put  out  the  light,  said  he. 

"  A  sweeter  light  than  ever  rayed 
From  star  of  heaven  or  eye  of  maid 
Has  vanished  in  the  unknown  shade. 

—  She  's  dead,  she  's  dead,  said  he. 

"  Now,  in  a  wild,  sad  after-mood 
The  tawny  night  sits  still  to  brood 
Upon  the  dawn-time  when  he  wooed. 

—  I  would  she  lived,  said  he. 

"  Star-memories  of  happier  times, 
Of  loving  deeds  and  lovers'  rhymes, 
Throng  forth  in  silvery  pantomines. 

—  Come  back,  O  Day  !  said  he." 


THE  SOUTH  497 

Though  the  allusions  to   ct  Othello "    are  far-fetched,  and 

o  * 

though  the  last  verse  evidently  breaks  down,  the  first  three 
have   an   unmistakably  lyric  touch. 

Lanier's  lyric  quality,  as  well  as  his  self-imposed  limitations, 
appear  more  clearly  in  a  later  work,  which  is  becoming  his 
most  celebrated :  "  The  Marshes  of  Glynn."  Here  his 
poetical  impulse  is  expressed  in  a  musical  form  which  he 
might  have  called  symphonic.  He  is  no  longer  writing  a 
song  j  he  is  working  out  a  complicated  motive,  in  a  manner 
so  entirely  his  own  that  the  first  thirty-six  lines,  as  irregular 
in  form  as  those  of  Timrod's  "  Cotton  Boll,"  and  more  ir 
regular  in  length,  compose  one  intricate,  incomprehensible 
sentence.  The  closing  passage,  easier  to  understand,  pos 
sesses  quite  as  much  symphonic  fervour.  He  has  been 
gazing  out  over  the  marshes  and  trying  to  phrase  the  limit 
less  emotion  which  arises  as  he  contemplates  a  trackless  plain 
where  land  and  sea  interfuse.  Then  the  tide  begins  to  rise, 
and  he  goes  on  thus : — 

"  Lo,  out  of  his  plenty  the  sea 

Pours  fast :  full  soon  the  time  of  the  flood-tide  must  be  : 

Look  how  the  grace  of  the  sea  doth  go 

About  and  about  through  the  intricate  channels  that  flow 

Here  and  there,  Everywhere, 

Till  his  waters  have  flooded  the  uttermost  creeks  and  the  low-lying 

lanes 

And  the  marsh  is  meshed  with  a  million  veins 
That  like  as  with  rosy  and  silvery  essences  flow 
In  the  rose-and-silver  evening  glow. 

Farewell,  my  lord  Sun  ! 

The  creeks  overflow :  a  thousand  rivulets  run 
Twixt  the  roots  of  the  sod ;  the  blades  of  the  marsh-grass  stir ; 
Passes  a  hurrying  sound  of  wings  that  westward  whir ; 
Passes,  and  all  is  still ;  and  the  currents  cease  to  run ; 
And  the  sea  and  the  marsh  are  one. 

"  How  still  the  plains  of  the  waters  be ! 
The  tide  is  in  his  ecstasy. 
The  tide  is  at  his  highest  height : 
And  it  is  night. 

32 


498  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

"  And  now  from  the  Vast  of  the  Lord  will  the  waters  of  sleep 
Roll  in  on  the  souls  of  men, 
But  who  will  reveal  to  our  waking  ken 
The  forms  that  swim  and  the  shapes  that  creep 

Under  the  waters  of  sleep? 
And  I  would  I  could  know  what  swimmeth  below  when  the  tide 

comes  in 
On  the  length  and  the  breadth  of  the  marvellous  marshes  of  Glynn." 

Now  this  inarticulate  verse  is  of  a  quality  which  can  never 
be  popular,  and  perhaps  indeed  is  so  eccentric  that  one  should 
be  prudent  in  choosing  adjectives  to  praise  it.  The  more  you 
read  the  "Marshes  of  Glynn,"  however,  and  the  more,  in 
deed,  you  read  any  of  Lanier's  poetry,  the  more  certain  you 
feel  that  he  was  among  the  truest  men  of  letters  whom  our 
country  has  produced.  Genuine  in  impulse,  fervid  in  tem 
per,  impressed  but  not  overwhelmed  by  the  sad  and  tragic 
conditions  of  his  life,  and  sincerely  moved  to  write  in  words 
which  he  constantly  and  ardently  strove  to  make  beautiful, 
he  exhibits  lyric  power  hardly  to  be  found  in  any  other 
American. 

All  this,  however,  seems  hardly  national.  Some  little 
time  ago  we  touched  on  the  fact  that  one  of  his  most  effec 
tive  narrative  poems,  the  u  Revenge  of  Hamish,"  deals  with 
an  episode  purely  Scotch.  His  first  novel,  the  "  Tiger  Lily," 
to  be  sure,  which  has  survived  only  in  name,  dealt  with  an 
American  subject.  His  books  for  boys,  however,  produced 
by  an  impulse  something  like  Longfellow's,  were  meant  to 
make  the  brave  and  romantic  traditions  of  Europe  familiar  to 
American  youth  ;  his  u  Science  of  English  Verse,"  his  "  Lec 
tures  on  the  English  Novel,"  and  the  volumes  of  posthumous 
essays  which  have  appeared  in  later  years,  all  dealt  with  gen 
eral  aesthetic  subjects.  Lanier's  earthly  career  was  wholly 
American,  and  almost  wholly  Southern;  the  emotional  temper 
with  which  he  was  filled  must  have  been  quickened  by  experi 
ence  in  our  own  country.  The  things  with  which  he  chose  to 
deal,  however,  might  have  come  to  him  anywhere.  The  very 


THE  SOUTH  499 

fact  which  keeps  him  permanently  from  popularity  is  perhaps 
this  lack  of  local  perception,  as  distinguished  from  a  temper 
which  could  not  help  being  of  local  origin.  So  if  Lanier's 
work  tells  us  anything  about  Southern  literature,  it  only  tells 
us,  a  little  more  surely  than  that  of  Dr.  Ticknor,  or  of  Hayne, 
or  of  Timrod,  how  the  tragic  convulsion  of  our  Civil  War 
waked  in  the  South  a  kind  of  passion  which  America  had 
hardly  exhibited  before. 

Cursory  as  this  glance  at  our  Southern  literature  has  been,  it 
probably  comprehends  all  that  has  been  produced  in  the  South 
by  men  no  longer  living.  Reviewing  it,  we  are  compelled  to 
say  that  our  Southern  regions  have  as  yet  produced  little  if 
any  more  significant  literature  than  the  North  had  produced 
before  1832.  Since  the  Civil  War  the  social  and  economic 
condition  of  the  South  has  been  too  disturbed  for  anything 
like  final  expression.  As  yet,  then,  the  South  presents  little 
to  vary  the  general  outlines  of  literature  in  America.  The  few 
Southern  poets,  however,  who  have  phrased  the  emotion 
aroused  by  the  Civil  War  which  swept  their  earlier  civilisa 
tion  out  of  existence,  reveal  a  lyric  fervour  hardly  yet  equalled 
in  the  North.  As  one  thinks,  then,  of  Dr.  Ticknor,  of 
Hayne,  of  Timrod,  and  of  Lanier,  one  begins  to  wonder 
whether  they  may  not  perhaps  forerun  a  spirit  which  shall 
give  beauty  and  power  to  the  American  letters  of  the  future. 


IV 

THE    WEST 

WHEN  the  father  of  Fenimore  Cooper  took  his  family  to  Cen 
tral  New  York,  a  little  more  than  a  century  ago,  Central  New 
York  was  still  a  Western  wilderness.  Amid  the  numerous 
conventions  of  Cooper's  Leather-Stocking  stories,  then,  there 
emerge  many  traces  of  actual  experience  which  show  what  our 
Western  country  used  to  be.  In  this  aspect,  the  conclusion 
of  the  Leather-Stocking  stories  is  significant.  The  pioneer 
hero  starts  alone  for  a  wilderness  more  Western  still, 
pressed  by  the  inconvenient  growth  of  population  in  the 
regions  where  he  has  passed  his  mature  life.  The  types  of 
Western  immigrants  thus  suggested  are  those  most  frequently 
kept  in  mind  by  tradition ;  and  probably  the  most  admirable 
Western  settlers  were  on  the  one  hand  such  people  as  the 
elder  Cooper,  who  went  to  establish  in  a  previously  unbroken 
country  new  and  grander  fortunes,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  such 
personages  as  Fenimore  Cooper  idealised  in  his  most  popular 
hero.  These  latter,  of  whom  perhaps  the  most  familiar  in 
traditional  memory  is  Daniel  Boone,  were  people  adventur 
ously  impatient  of  conventions,  who  betook  themselves  with 
constantly  fresh  restlessness  to  places  where,  in  virtue  of  soli 
tude,  they  could  live  as  independently  as  they  chose.  In  this 
type,  however,  as  the  very  popularity  it  achieved  with  Euro 
pean  revolutionists  would  show,  there  was  something  more  like 
reversion  than  development.  Far  enough  from  the  ideal  prim 
itive  man  of  the  French  Revolution,  they  tended  in  virtues 
and  in  vices  alike  rather  back  towards  primitive  manhood  than 
forward  towards  maturer  society.  As  we  have  already  seen  in 


THE   WEST  501 

various  ways,  national  inexperience,  which  marks  all  Ameri 
can  history  until  well  into  the  present  century,  had  tended 
to  retard  the  variation  of  our  native  character  from  the  origi 
nal  type  of  seventeenth-century  England.  Such  complete 
relaxation  of  social  experience  as  was  involved  in  the  temper 
and  conduct  of  the  pioneers  tended  to  throw  them  back  toward 
the  kind  of  human  nature  which  had  vanished  from  the  old 
world  with  the  middle  ages.  Something  of  the  kind,  indeed, 
is  apparent  even  in  remote  districts  of  New  England.  In 
many  parts  of  the  West,  it  was  once  frequent  enough  to  be 
characteristic. 

Another  kind  of  Western  settler  has  been  less  generally 
remarked.  Among  the  New  York  Literati  preserved  from 
oblivion  by  Poe  was  Mrs.  Kirkland,  who  happened  about  1840 
to  pass  three  or  four  years  in  Michigan,  then  a  sparsely  settled 
Western  region.  Between  1839  and  1846,  she  published 
three  books  dealing  with  her  Western  experiences  :  "  A  New 
Home,"  "  Forest  Life,"  and  "  Western  Clearings."  In  them 
selves  little  more  than  such  good-humoured  sketches  as  any 
clever,  well-bred  woman  might  write  in  correspondence,  these 
books  vividly  show  how  the  West  once  appeared  to  a  cultivated 
Eastern  observer.  One  fact  which  she  treats  as  a  matter  of 
course  is  historically  suggestive.  When  the  country  where 
the  scene  of  her  stories  is  laid  began  to  get  tamed,  the  more 
shiftless  settlers  were  apt  to  avoid  the  increasing  strenuous- 
ness  of  life  by  moving  as  much  farther  West  as  they  could  beg, 
borrow,  or  steal  means  to  go.  These  personages  typify  an  ele 
ment  of  Western  society  which  has  been  there  from  the 
beginning.  That  vast  new  region  of  ours  has  been  partly 
settled,  no  doubt,  by  such  admirable  energy  as  is  typified  by 
the  elder  Cooper  or  Mrs.  Kirkland  herself.  It  has  been 
partly  settled,  too,  by  the  primitive,  vigorous  restlessness  of  the 
better  sort  of  pioneers.  Along  with  these  admirably  construc 
tive  types  of  character,  however,  there  has  mingled  from  the 
beginning  a  destructive  type,  which  went  West  because  it  could 


-502  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

not  prosper  at  home,  and  which  could  not  prosper  at  home 
because  it  was  too  shiftless  to  prosper  anywhere. 

Such  a  class  as  this,  of  course,  is  a  recognised  part  of  any 
colonising  movement.  Its  influence  on  the  general  character 
of  the  West  has  been  too  little  emphasised.  In  our  older 
Northern  States  it  is  commonly  supposed  that  at  first  the 
West  was  dominated  by  fine  energy,  and  that  the  disturbing 
element  now  evident  there  came  either  from  foreign  immi 
gration  or  from  the  incursion  of  Southern  "  poor  whites."  In 
fact,  it  seems  more  likely  that  those  Western  regions  whose 
political  and  moral  condition  now  leaves  most  to  be  desired 
are  those  where  native  Northern  blood  preponderates.  If 
this  be  true,  the  shiftless  immigrants  of  Mrs.  Kirkland's  day, 
evidently  what  we  should  now  call  social  degenerates,  have 
proved  a  more  important  factor  in  our  history  than  tradition 
has  remembered.  For  in  our  national  politics  the  West  has 
grown,  from  the  nature  of  our  Constitution,  to  exercise  an 
influence  almost  as  disproportionate  to  its  numerical  population 
as  that  exercised  by  the  slaveholding  South.  As  the  Territo 
ries  have  been  admitted  States  of  the  Union,  each  new  State 
has  been  represented  in  the  Senate  equally  with  New  York  or 
Massachusetts,  Pennsylvania  or  Virginia.  Our  national  leg 
islation,  then,  has  had  sometimes  to  adapt  itself  to  the  vagaries 
of  these  new  commonwealths,  whose  inexperience  was  at  the 
outset  extreme,  and  whose  wisdom  —  political  and  moral 
alike  —  often  seems  remote  from  recognised  standards. 

Our  chief  concern,  however,  is  not  with  politics  or  even 
with  society;  it  is  rather  with  those  aspects  of  feeling  and 
temper  which  tend  toward  something  which  the  West  has 
not  yet  achieved,  —  namely,  literary  expression.  Glimpses  of 
these,  as  they  appeared  to  foreign  eyes,  are  to  be  found  in  the 
familiar  old  books  of  travel  which  formerly  so  incensed 
Americans  against  Mrs.  Trollope ;  and  a  little  later  in  those 
caricatures  of  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit "  which  so  displeased 
American  sensibilities  that  American  readers  are  prone  to  for- 


THE    WEST  503 

get  how  the  same  book  caricatures  the  English  too,  in  such 
figures  as  Mr.  Pecksniff  and  Mrs.  Sarah  Gamp.  A  very 
different  picture  of  the  Middle  West,  a  little  later,  is  to  be 
found  in  a  book  which  in  certain  moods  one  is  disposed  for 
all  its  eccentricity  to  call  the  most  admirable  work  of  liter 
ary  art  as  yet  produced  on  this  continent.  This  is  that 
Odyssean  story  of  the  Mississippi  to  which  Mark  Twain 
gave  the  grotesque  name  of  "  Huckleberry  Finn.''  The 
material  from  which  he  made  this  book  he  carelessly  flung 
together  a  year  or  two  before  in  a  rambling  series  of  remi 
niscences  called  "Life  on  the  Mississippi."  Mrs.  Trollope, 
"Martin  Chuzzlewit,"  "Life  on  the  Mississippi,"  and 
"  Huckleberry  Finn  "  will  combine  to  give  a  fair  notion  of 
Western  life  and  character  before  the  Civil  War. 

A  picture  of  it,  from  a  different  point  of  view,  may  be 
found  in  a  book  of  which  the  accuracy  has  been  questioned. 
This  is  a  loquacious  "  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln,"  by  Mr. 
Herndon,  at  one  time  Lincoln's  partner  in  the  practice  of 
law.  Without  power  enough  either  to  perceive  or  to  set  forth 
the  traits  which  made  Lincoln,  whatever  his  faults,  the  most 
heroic  American  figure  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Herndorr, 
an  every-day  Western  lawyer,  was  thoroughly  familiar  with 
the  society  amid  which  Lincoln  grew  up,  and  from  which  he 
ultimately  emerged  into  national  public  life.  Herndon,  too, 
was  so  gossipy  that  he  could  not  help  writing  vividly.  As  is 
generally  known,  Lincoln's  family  history  resembled  that  of 
the  shiftless  immigrants  sketched  by  Mrs.  Kirkland.  That  so 

o  J 

admirably  powerful  a  character  could  spring  from  such  humble 
origin  is  generally  recognised  among  the  hopeful  facts  of  our 
national  history.  Herndon's  book  reveals  a  phase  of  the  story 
hardly  evident  elsewhere.  As  you  read  the  incidents  of  Lin 
coln's  youth,  whatever  the  authenticity  of  this  anecdote  or  that, 
you  can  hardly  avoid  the  impression  that  the  social  surroundings 
in  which  his  life  began  were  astonishingly  like  those  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  These  people,  of  course,  dressed  in  garments, 


504  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

and  used  words,  and  had  traditions  which  imply  various 
occurrences  since  early  Plantagenet  times.  It  is  hardly 
excessive  to  say,  however,  that  their  general  mental  and  moral 
condition  was  more  like  that  attributed  to  the  English  peas 
antry  in  the  days  of  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  than  like  any  native 
English  existence  much  more  recent.  Amid  the  relaxed 
inexperience  of  Western  life  the  lower  sort  of  Americans  had 
tended  to  revert  towards  a  social  state  ancestrally  extinct  cen 
turies  before  America  was  discovered.  During  Lincoln's  career 
the  West  was  rapidly  settling ;  and  as  you  read  Herndon  you 
have  a  curious  sense  that  months  and  years  are  doing  the  work 
of  generations  and  centuries.  It  is  as  if  in  1809  Lincoln  had 
been  born  under  King  Richard  I. ;  and  when  the  man  was 
fifty  years  old,  he  was  abreast  of  our  own  time.  One  thing 
which  contributed  to  his  amazing  power  was  this  exceptional 
social  environment,  of  which  Herndon's  book  gives  so  vivid  a 
picture.  Almost  alone  of  eminent  Americans,  Lincoln  had 
chanced  to  know  the  inexperience  of  our  native  country  in 
almost  all  its  phases. 

In  our  Western  regions  this  extraordinary  confusion  of  the 
centuries  is  not  yet  past.  The  essay  which  Mr.  Owen  Wister 
has  prefixed  to  his  stories,  "Red  Men  and  White,"  points  out 
that  in  the  Far  West  there  are  still  regions  of  which  the  civili 
sation  is  much  less  mature  than  that  of  Elizabethan  England. 
Everybody  knows  that  our  national  government  has  somehow 
to  reconcile  the  purposes  and  interests  of  societies  widely  dif 
ferent  in  climatic  conditions  and  historic  origin.  Even  New 
England  and  New  York  differ  in  some  respects  ;  both  alike 
differ  from  the  older  Southern  colonies;  and  the  Northwest 
differs  from  the  Southwest,  and  Louisiana  from  everything 
else;  and  so  do  the  regions  of  Spanish  origin.  Mr.  Wister 
points  out  the  less  salient  fact  that  varying  phases  of  Ameri 
can  inexperience  have  thrown  certain  parts  of  our  country 
back  into  the  Middle  Ages,  while  others  amid  accumulating 
experience  have  advanced  to  fully  modern  conditions.  The 


THE   WEST  505 

problem  of  our  national  politics,  then,  is  even  more  compli 
cated  than  it  has  seemed;  we  must  reconcile  differences 
which  extend  not  only  through  widely  divergent  space,  but 
also  through  generations  and  centuries  of  social  and  historic 
time. 

From  the  causes  at  which  we  have  glanced,  two  or  three 
familiar  results  have  followed.  A  hundred  years  ago,  the 
greater  part  of  our  country  was  still  a  wilderness,  and  Central 
New  York  itself  a  region  where  native  Indians  still  lingered. 
To-day,  it  is  said,  almost  every  available  acre  throughout  the 
United  States  is  in  private  ownership ;  ancL  regions  which 
within  living  memory  were  still  unbroken  prairie  are  the  sites  of 
cities  more  populous  than  New  York  or  Boston  was  fifty  years 
ago.  From  influences  quite  beyond  human  control,  then,  the 
energies  of  our  Western  people  have  devoted  themselves  to 
the  conquest  of  Nature  on  a  scale  hitherto  unattempted.  No 
wonder  the  most  salient  trait  of  our  great  confused  West  seems 
enthusiasm  for  material  prosperity  as  distinguished  from  spiritual 
or  intellectual  ideals.  Yet  there  are  such  things  as  Western 
ideals,  different  from  the  older  ideals  of  New  England,  but  per 
haps  as  admirable.  Though  these  have  not  yet  expressed  them 
selves  in  literary  form,  they  assumed,  some  few  years  ago,  a 
plastic  form  which  must  deeply  have  impressed  any  one  who 
saw  it. 

When,  in  1893,  tne  World's  Fair  was  held  at  Chicago,  one 
might  have  expected  colossal  crudity  of  taste.  The  archi 
tects  of  the  buildings,  to  be  sure,  were  not  always  Western 
men;  but  the  controlling  spirit  which  enabled  the  architect 
ural  energy  of  America  to  concentrate  itself  in  an  imagina 
tive  effort  hitherto  unapproached  came  almost  wholly  from 
Chicago.  The  structures  which  grew  from  this  spirit  and 
energy  became  an  imaginatively  stimulating  expression  of 
noble  aesthetic  temper.  Whatever  their  imperfection  of 
detail,  they  were  imperially  beautiful.  That  transitory  city, 
too,  which  the  energy  of  western  America  thus  for  a  moment 


5o6      THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

created,  had  a  transitory  population  drawn  mostly  from  those 
regions  which  we  still  call  Western.  For  the  expense  and 
difficulty  of  long  journeys  weighed  more  and  more  on  people 
from  a  distance.  As  you  watched  this  passing  population 
day  by  day,  you  felt  growing  surprise  and  admiration  at  their 
simplicity  of  feeling,  their  eagerness  to  delight  in  excellence, 
and  their  cheerful  observance  of  public  order.  For  one  thing, 
—  a  mere  detail,  —  there  is  a  general  feeling  among  the 
ordinary  people  of  America  that  the  sale  of  intoxicating  drink 
must  necessarily  lead  to  wide-spread  drunkenness,  —  whence 
the  prohibitory  ^legislation  so  frequently  vexatious  to  civilised 
travellers  in  the  United  States.  At  the  Chicago  Exhibition, 
intoxicating  drinks  were  freely  sold  ;  and  the  daily  visitors  num 
bered  hundreds  of  thousands.  They  were  people,  too,  of  widely 
various  social  origin.  Yet  there  was  hardly  more  evidence  of 
drunkenness  than  if  the  vice  had  never  existed.  The  general 
manner  of  the  crowd,  too,  though  lacking  the  unconscious  grace 
which  one  finds  in  gatherings  of  older  nations,  was  good- 
humoured  and  polite.  If  the  citizens  from  the  four  corners  of 
the  West  who  came  to  Chicago  during  those  few  weeks  may 
be  taken  as  typical  of  western  America,  the  West  is  a  region 
from  which  in  time  to  come  we  may  hope  for  broader  and 
more  superbly  imaginative  expression  than  any  which  America 
has  hitherto  known. 


^,  this  great  confused  West  has  not  deve.1- 
opec(jiny~such  unity  of  character  as  has  marked  our  elder 
regions;  and  happily  most  of  the  writers  who  pleasantly  and 
worthily  express  certain  aspects  of  Western  life  are  still  living. 
On  the  serious  literature  of  the  West,  then,  we  cannot  touch  in 
detail.  Its  chief  feature  seems  to  be  those  short  stories  which 
set  forth  with  accuracy,  if  not  with  lasting  vitality,  the  local 
characteristics  of  California  or  of  Kentucky,  of  Arkansas,  of 
Arizona,  or  of  wherever  else.  In  Chicago,  meantime,  at  this 
moment  the  most  populous  and  characteristic  Western  city, 
there  is  considerable  publication;  and  this  includes  a  fort- 


THE   WEST  507 

nightly  paper,  the  "  Dial,"  which  seems  at  present  the  most 
unbiassed,  good-humoured,  and  sensible  organ  of  American 
criticism.  In  general,  however,  Western  literary  expression 
is  still  confined  to  popular  journalism. 

Though  American  newspapers,  particularly  of  that  ex 
tremely  unacademic  kind  popular  in  the  West,  can  hardly  be 
brought  within  any  definition  of  literature,  they  form,  for  better 
or  worse,  the  only  habitual  reading  of  most  native  Americans. 
Offensive  though  they  generally  be  to  taste,  then,  and  often 
to  civic  morals  as  well,  Western  newspapers  are  significant  in 
such  considerations  as  ours.  Their  most  obvious  trait  is  sen 
sationalism.  So  long  as  news  is  exciting,  they  care  little 
whether  it  prove  true.  In  a  deliberate  effort  to  please  an 
untutored  public,  they  do  not  hesitate  to  play  on  every  passing 
prejudice  of  the  moment ;  and,  written  for  the  most  part  by 
people  of  small  education,  often  mere  boys,  their  style  in 
every  phase  but  one  is  apt  to  be  thoroughly  vicious.  Almost 
all,  however,  display  one  merit  which  atones  for  numberless 
errors ;  almost  all  are  readable,  to  a  degree  which  even 
educated  minds  find  insidiously  attractive. 

As  you  grow  familiar  with  American  newspapers,  it  appears 
that  besides  their  chief  function  of  purveying  news  in  a  man 
ner  welcome  to  uneducated  readers  they  undertake  to  provide 
such  readers  with  fragmentary  matter  of  which  the  substance 
comes  nearer  to  literature.  In  recognised  "  departments,"  you 
will  find  many  items  of  general  information  ;  many  scraps  of 
verse,  too,  some  of  which  approaches  poetry ;  and,  above  all, 
in  most  papers  of  much  pretension  you  are  apt  to  find  regular 
contributions  intended  simply  to  make  you  laugh. 

Mainly  from  this  source,  —  the  comic  columns  of  American 
newspapers,  —  there  has  tended  to  develop  a  kind  of  native 
expression  hardly  recognised  forty  years  ago  and  now  popu 
larly  supposed  to  be  our  most  characteristic.  This  is  what 
is  commonly  called  American  humour. 

Some  vein  of  humour,  of  course,  has  existed  in  America 


5o8  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

almost  from  the  beginning.  In  the  admirable  analytic  index 
of  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  "  Library  of  American  Litera 
ture,"  American  humour  is  held  to  have  existed  as  early  as 
1647,  when  Nathaniel  Ward,  minister  of  Ipswich,  published 
his  "  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,"  a  work  which  contains 
satirical  sketches  of  character  in  the  regular  seventeenth- 
century  manner.  There  was  plenty  of  conventional  humour, 
too,  in  the  literature  of  the  American  Revolution.  Hopkin- 
son's  "  Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  however,  the  most  familiar  ex 
ample  of  this,  needs  only  comparison  with  Cowper's  nearly 
contemporary  "  John  Gilpin  "  to  reveal  that  its  chief  American 
trait  is  a  somewhat  unskilful  touch.  Franklin's  humour  was 
somewhat  more  national ;  that  letter  of  his  to  a  London  news 
paper,  about  1760,  proved  the  most  hard-headed  and  versatile 
of  eighteenth-century  Americans  to  have  been  capable  of  a 
grave  confusion  of  fact  and  nonsense  which  reminds  one  of 
Mark  Twain's.  Among  our  acknowledged  men  of  letters,  in 
later  days,  several  have  won  recognition  largely  by  means  of 
their  humorous  passages.  Irving's  "  Knickerbocker,"  for 
example,  founded  his  reputation  by  just  such  confusion  of  literal 
statement  with  extravagance  as  made  Franklin's  letter  amus 
ing  fifty  years  before  and  Mark  Twain's  "  Innocents  Abroad  " 
fifty  years  later ;  in  all  three,  you  are  constantly  perplexed  as 
to  what  is  so  and  what  not.  Something  of  the  same  kind 
you  find  again  in  Lowell's  "  Fable  for  Critics "  and  his 
"  Biglow  Papers."  The  humour  of  Parson  Wilbur's  intermi 
nable  introductions,  to  be  sure,  seems  mostly  of  the  ponderous 
old  English  type ;  but  the  verses  themselves,  amid  all  their 
extravagance  of  dialect  and  puns,  now  and  again  state  grave 
truths  in  solemnly  plain  terms,  and  sometimes  rise  into  noble 
poetry.  In  the  "Monument  and  the  Bridge,"  the  last  of 
Lowell's  poems  at  which  we  happened  to  glance,  these  traits 
are  instantly  apparent.  Holmes,  too,  was  so  humorous  in 
temper  that  when,  during  his  last  visit  to  England,  he  had 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  his  portrait  in  "Vanity  Fair,"  he 


THE    WEST 


509 


must  have  felt  quiet  amusement  at  the  brief  biography  which 
accompanied  it  with  the  statement  that  so  conservative  a 
Boston  gentleman  was  a  typically  American  u  funny  fellow." 

No  criticism  could  have  shown  much  less  understanding 
of  Holmes's  real  position  in  our  letters.  Like  Lowell  and 
Irving,  and  in  many  respects  Franklin  himself,  Holmes  was 
not  only  American  in  his  humorous  habit  of  shifting  from 
seriousness  to  burlesque,  and  from  burlesque  back  to  serious 
ness,  at  moments  when  you  least  expected ;  but,  like  almost 
all  American  men  of  letters  in  his  generation,  he  was  a  man 
of  distinction.  Whatever  the  strength  or  the  weakness  of 
the  writers  whom  we  have  considered,  their  fun,  like  their 
seriousness  and  their  commonplace,  is  of  the  sort  which  char 
acterises  gentlemen.  Democratic  though  our  country  be, 
those  actually  recognised  as  our  men  of  letters,  even  if,  like 
Franklin  or  Whittier,  of  simple  origin,  have  generally  pos 
sessed  in  their  ripeness  a  personal  dignity,  at  once  conscious 
and  willingly  acknowledged.  In  momentarily  distinguished 
form,  then,  American  humour  first  declared  itself.  The  form 
which  has  been  developing  in  Western  newspapers  has  other 
traits. 

The  chief  of  these,  which  is  inherent  in  the  popularity  of 
Western  journalism,  is  hard  to  define,  but  palpable  and 
vital.  It  amounts  to  a  general  assumption  that  everybody 
whom  you  address  will  entirely  understand  whatever  you  say. 
Such  an  assumption  implies  broad  human  feeling.  We  all 
know  that  men  differ  not  only  in  temperament,  but  also  in 
accordance  with  the  conditions  of  their  lives  ;  and  most  of  us 
are  over-conscious  of  such  differences.  Now  and  again,  how 
ever,  you  come  across  somebody  who  contagiously  assumes 
that  for  all  our  differences  every  human  being  is  really  human, 
and  so  that  everybody's  emotions,  sublime  or  ridiculous,  may 
generally  be  excited  in  the  same  way.  A  familiar  example  of 
the  temper  now  in  mind  pervaded  a  kind  of  entertainment  fre 
quent  in  America  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  —  the  negro  min- 


5io  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

strel  shows,  now  tending  to  vanish  in  performances  like  those 
of  London  music  halls.  In  these  shows  a  number  of  men 
would  daub  their  faces  with  burnt  cork,  would  dress  themselves 
in  preposterous  burlesque  of  the  florid  taste  still  characteristic 
of  negroes,  and  sitting  in  a  row  would  sing  songs  and  tell 
stories.  The  songs  were  sometimes  sentimental,  the  stories 
almost  always  extravagantly  comic  ;  but  underlying  one  and  all 
was  an  assumption  that  everybody  who  heard  what  the  per 
formers  said  was  familiar  with  everything  they  knew,  —  not 
only  with  local  allusions  and  human  nature,  but  also  with  the 
very  names  and  personal  oddities  of  the  individuals  they  men 
tioned.  To  phrase  the  thing  colloquially,  the  whole  perform 
ance  assumed  that  we  were  all  in  the  crowd.  You.  will  find 
a  touch  of  this  temper  in  FalstafF,  plenty  of  it  in  Sancho 
Panza ;  you  will  find  it,  too,  in  the  conventional  personages 
of  the  old  European  stage,  —  Policinello  or  Sganarelle ;  you 
will  find  it  in  the  mountebanks  who  have  plied  their  trade 
throughout  human  history.  This  temper  is  obviously  akin  to 
that  broadly  human  feeling  which  underlies  all  great  works  of 
lasting  .art.  The  more  we  can  assume  that  everybody  is 
human,  the  more  human  our  literary  work  will  be. 

Some  such  trait  as  this  pervades  the  "  funny  "  columns  of 
American  newspapers,  particularly  in  the  West ;  and  it  is 
mostly  from  these  columns  that  American  humour  has  emerged 
into  what  approach  it  has  made  to  literary  form.  Generally, 
of  course,  this  humour,  like  other  recent  phases  of  American 
expression,  has  come  from  men  still  living,  and  so  is  beyond 
our  range ;  but  at  least  three  familiar  humorous  figures  who 
are  no  longer  with  us  typify  the  kind  of  literary  impulse  now 
in  mind.  The  first  was  George  Horatio  Derby,  an  army 
officer,  born  of  a  good  Massachusetts  family  in  1823,  who 
spent  a  good  deal  of  his  life  in  the  West,  particularly  in  Cali 
fornia.  Here,  under  the  name  of  John  Phoenix,  he  took  to 
writing  whimsical  letters  for  the  newspapers,  two  volumes  of 
which  had  been  collected  and  published  before  his  death  in 


THE   WEST  5n 

1 86 1.  In  their  day,  "  Phoenixiana  "  and  the  "  Squibob  Pa 
pers,"  which  grotesquely  satirise  life  in  California  during  the 
early  days  of  American  control  there,  were  popular  all  over 
the  country.  To-day  one  feels  their  extravagance  more  than 
their  fun ;  the  whole  thing  seems  overdone.  John  Phoenix, 
however,  was  undoubtedly  among  the  earliest  humourists  of  a 
school  which  has  tended  to  produce  better  and  better  work. 

About  ten  years  after  his  time  there  came  into  notice  a  man 
whose  name  is  still  remembered  both  at  home  and  in  Eng 
land.  This  was  Charles  Farrar  Browne,  born  at  Waterford, 
Maine,  in  1834.  At  first  a  printer,  then  a  newspaper  man, 
he  drifted  to  Ohio,  where  about  1858  he  became  a  reporter 
on  the  Cleveland  "  Plain  Dealer."  For  this  he  began  to 
write,  over  the  signature  of  Artemus  Ward,  humorous  articles 
which  carried  both  the  "  Plain  Dealer  "  and  his  pseudonym 
all  over  the  country.  Just  before  the  Civil  War  he  took 
charge  of  a  comic  weekly  newspaper  in  New  York.  The 
war  brought  this  venture  to  an  end  ;  for  the  rest  of  his  life 
he  was  a  "  funny  "  lecturer ;  he  died  in  England  on  a  lecturing 
tour  in  1867.  Like  the  humour  of  John  Phoenix,  that  of 
Artemus  Ward  now  seems  tediously  extravagant ;  but  the 
essence  of  it  lies  in  his  inextricable  confusion  of  fact  and  non 
sense.  He  often  assumes  the  character  of  a  travelling  show 
man,  remotely  resembling  the  late  Mr.  Barnum,  in  which 
character  he  has  interviews  not  only  with  typical  individuals 
of  various  classes,  but  with  all  sorts  of  notable  persons,  from 
Brigham  Young  to  Queen  Victoria.  With  all  these  he  is  on 
the  most  intimate  terms ;  the  fun  lies  chiefly  in  the  grotesque 
incongruity  between  the  persons  concerned  and  what  they  say. 
Like  Lowell  in  the  "  Biglow  Papers,"  he  emphasised  his  jests 
with  mad  misspelling  and  the  like ;  but  all  his  vagaries  cannot 
conceal  the  sober  confusion  of  fact  and. nonsense  which  groups 
his  temper  with  that  of  Lowell  and  Irving  and  the  other 
humourists  of  our  standard  literature.  Essentially,  however,  as 
we  have  seen,  Lowell  and  Irving  and  Holmes  and  the  rest  were 


5i2  THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

gentlemen  and  men  of  taste ;  poor  Artemus  Ward  was  neither. 
Personally  he  is  said  to  have  been  so  far  from  reputable  that 
even  in  his  palmy  days  as  a  Cleveland  reporter  the  better  sort 
of  people  in  that  Ohio  city  let  him  severely  alone;  and 
throughout  the  volumes  in  which  his  newspaper  articles  were 
from  time  to  time  collected,  although  you  find  no  indecency, 
you  will  find  no  vestige  of  taste.  The  extreme  extravagance 
of  Artemus  Ward,  however,  peculiarly  commended  him  to 
many  readers  in  England,  who  found  his  work  so  different 
from  what  they  were  used  to,  that  they  welcomed  him  as 
characteristically  American. 

In  the  history  of  American  newspaper  humour  the  grotesque 
extravagance  of  Artemus  Ward  stands  midway  between  that 
of  John  Phoenix  and  that  of  the  writers  who  are  still  at  work. 
The  personal  career  of  the  man,  no  longer  living,  who  may  be 
taken  to  represent  this  later  stage  of  development  resembled 
that  of  Artemus  Ward.  David  Ross  Locke  was  born  in  a 
country  village  of  New  York  in  1833.  Like  Artemus  Ward, 
he  was  a  printer,  later  a  reporter,  and  later  still,  editor  of  a 
local  newspaper  in  Ohio.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Civil 
War  he  began  to  write  political  satires  over  the  signature  of 
Petroleum  V.  Nasby.  The  preposterousness  of  this  pseu 
donym  typifies  the  absurdity  of  his  misspelt  and  otherwise 
eccentric  style.  His  satire,  however,  which  was  widely  cir 
culated  at  a  moment  of  national  crisis,  dealt  with  matters  of 
significance.  He  had  come  intimately  to  know  the  border 
regions  between  the  North  and  the  South.  He  was  a  strong 
Union  man  ;  and  with  all  the  grotesque  mannerisms  of  a  news 
paper  humourist  he  satirised  Southern  character  and  those  phases 
of  Northern  character  which  sympathised  with  the  constitu 
tional  contentions  of  the  Confederacy.  Nasby's  work,  then, 
had  in  its  day  political  importance  ;  it  really  helped  solidify 
and  strengthen  Union  sentiment.  In  1865,  Mr.  Locke  be 
came  editor  of  the  "Toledo  Blade;"  and  he  survived  at 
Toledo,  Ohio,  until  1888.  His  work  as  a  humourist,  however, 


THE    WEST  513 

belongs  to  the  Civil  War  and  to  the  disturbed  ensuing  ad 
ministration  of  President  Johnson,  against  whom  some  of  his 
most  pitiless  satire  was  directed.  The  Nasby  letters  purport 
to  come  from  a  place  called  "  Confederate  X-Roads,"  and  to 
be  written  by  a  good-for-nothing  Southern  politician  with  no 
redeeming  trait  except  a  Falstaffian  presumption  that  every 
body  will  agree  with  him.  Addressing  himself  directly  to  the 
every-day  readers  of  an  Ohio  newspaper,  and  popular  through 
out  the  Northern  States,  Nasby  was  at  once  a  characteristic 
newspaper  humourist  and  a  satirist  of  considerable  power. 
His  work,  then,  has  considerable  interest  for  students  of 
American  political  history. 

Though,  in  general,  American  newspaper  humour  is  not  so 
significant,  it  has  retained  from  Nasby's  day  the  sort  of  con 
tagious  vitality  found  throughout  his  writings  ;  and  in  one  or 
two  cases  of  men  still  living  it  has  emerged  into  something 
more  notable.  In  one  case,  indeed,  it  has  resulted  in  literary 
work  so  characteristically  American,  and  so  widely  varied, 
that  while  happily  the  author  in  question  is  not  yet  a  posthu 
mous  subject  for  such  study  as  ours,  it  is  impossible  not  to  men 
tion  his  name.  If  there  be  any  contemporary  work  at  once 
thoroughly  American,  and,  for  all  its  errors  of  taste,  full  of 
indications  that  the  writer's  power  would  have  been  exceptional 
anywhere,  it  is  that  of  Mr.  Clemens,  more  widely  known  as 
Mark  Twain. 

On  the  whole,  however,  we  may  say  of  our  great  confused 
West,  that  just  as  surely  as  New  England  has  made  its  mark 
in  the  literary  history  of  America,  so  as  yet  this  West  has  not. 
Its  general  literary  condition  resembles  that  of  the  South,  and 
of  New  York  in  the  days  which  have  followed  the  Knicker 
bocker  School.  Its  varied,  swiftly  changing  life  has  not  yet 
ripened  into  an  experience  which  can  possibly  find  lasting 
expression. 


33 


THE    PRESENT    TIME 

So  at  last  we  come  to  the  question  of  what  America  is  doing 
in  literature  to-day.  At  this,  of  course,  we  must  glance  very 
generally.  Living  men,  we  decided  long  ago,  are  not  within 
the  scope  of  our  study ;  we  may  properly  inquire  only  what 
literary  symptoms  we  discern  in  our  new  nation,  which  almost 
within  our  own  time  has  tamed  and  settled  the  American  con 
tinent  from  sea  to  sea. 

Old  New  York,  we  saw,  expressed  itself  in  our  first 
school  of  renascent  writing,  which  withered  away  with  the 
"  Knickerbocker  Magazine  ;  "  and  modern  New  York  seems 
doing  little  more  than  contemplate  the  forces  from  which  by 
and  by  some  newer  and  deeper  literature  may  emerge.  New 
England  ripened  into  renascent  expression  ;  but  its  Renais 
sance  is  now  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  in  many  aspects  the 
New  England  of  to-day  seems  otherwise  past  its  prime.  In 
the  older  South,  literature  was  never  highly  developed  ;  and 
the  Civil  War  is  hardly  yet  so  remote  as  to  allow  the  new 
South  to  have  declared  its  final  character.  The  West,  too, 
has  not  yet  reached  maturity.  The  America  of  the  future, 
however,  seems  likely  to  be  a  country  in  which  the  forces  which 
have  gathered  separately  may  finally  fuse  into  a  centralised 
nationality  more  conscious  and  more  powerful  than  we  have 
yet  known.  It  becomes  interesting,  then,  to  inquire  what 
literary  symptoms,  if  any,  are  common  to  our  whole  country, 
what  kind  of  expression  is  now  familiar  throughout  it. 

The  newspaper  we  have  seen,  for  one  thing,  crude,  sensa 
tional,  and  mostly  addressed  to  the  unthinking  classes.  It 


THE  PRESENT  TIME 


515 


emerges  into  literary  quality,  if  at  all,  only  in  the  form  of  a 
reckless  humour  whose  history  shows  something  like  develop 
ment.  This  humour  is  always  extravagant,  generally  deficient 
in  taste,  and  mostly  ephemeral ;  but  its  underlying  trait  seems 
like  that  of  the  humour  which  has  enlivened  our  standard 
literature.  Our  American  temper  has  a  shrewd  sense  of  fact. 
Its  instinctive  conception  of  fun  seems  to  lie  in  a  preposter 
ous  confusion  of  hard  fact  with  wild  nonsense,  complicated 
and  freshly  confused  by  a  superficially  grave  manner.  Its 
jumps  from  serious  things  to  things  which  no  human  being 
could  take  seriously,  and  back  again,  are  incalculably  sudden. 
What  looks  like  a  vital  trait  in  all  this  is  the  tendency  among 
the  "  funny  men  "  of  our  newspapers  to  deal  with  fact  in  grow- 
ingly  mature  spirit.  Artemus  Ward  came  nearer  life  than 
John  Phoenix,  Nasby  than  Artemus  Ward  ;  and,  on  the  whole, 
the  more  recent  of  our  newspaper  humourists  seem  rather  more 
firmly  poised  than  Nasby.  So  far,  this  phase  of  American 
literature  has  produced  nothing  which  can  reasonably  be  ex 
pected  to  last.  From  this  broadly  popular  origin,  however, 
may  perhaps  come  in  future  some  lasting  development.  At 
least,  if  a  man  should  appear  in  America  with  such  gifts  as 
now  and  again  have  made  the  humourists  of  other  countries 
''.mmortal,  that  man  would  find  ready  a  vehicle  of  expression 
and  a  public  which  might  help  him  to  produce  works  of  humour 
at  once  permanent  and  characteristically  national. 

Though  newspapers  are  incalculably  the  most  popular 
vehicles  of  modern  American  expression,  there  are  other  such 
vehicles  generally  familiar  to  our  educated  classes.  The  prin 
cipal  of  these  are  the  illustrated  monthly  magazines  published 
in  New  York.  These,  which  circulate  by  hundreds  of  thou 
sands,  and  go  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other,  pro 
vide  the  ordinary  American  citizen  of  to-day  with  his  nearest 
approach  to  literature.  A  glance  through  any  volume  of  any 
of  them  will  show  that  the  literary  form  which  most  luxuri 
antly  flourishes  in  their  pages  is  the  short  story.  This  de- 


5i6  THE  REST  OF  THE   STORY 

velopment  of  short  stones  is  partly  a  question  of  business, 
Short  stones  have  usually  been  more  profitable  to  writers  and 
more  convenient  to  editors  than  long  novels  ;  and  at  this  moment 
poetry  seems  not  to  appeal  to  any  considerable  public  taste. 
Partly,  however,  this  prevalence  of  short  stories  seems  nation 
ally  characteristic  of  American  as  distinguished  from  English 
men  of  letters.  Of  late,  no  doubt,  England  has  produced  one 
or  two  writers  who  do  this  kind  of  work  extraordinarily  well ; 
there  is  no  living  American,  for  example,  whose  stories  equal 
those  of  Mr.  Kipling ;  but  Mr.  Kipling,  a  remarkable  master  of 
this  difficult  literary  form,  is  a  comparatively  new  phenomenon 
in  English  literature.  From  the  days  of  Washington  Irving, 
on  the  other  hand,  Americans  have  shown  themselves  able  to 
write  short  stories  rather  better  than  anything  else.  The  older 
short  stories  of  America  —  Irving's  and  Poe's  and  even  Haw 
thorne's  —  were  generally  romantic  in  both  impulse  and  man 
ner.  Accordingly,  however  local  their  sentiment  may  have 
been,  and  however  local  in  certain  cases  their  descriptive  pas 
sages,  they  were  not  precisely  documents  from  which  local 
conditions  might  be  inferred.  The  short  stories  of  modern 
Americans  differ  from  these  by  being  generally  realistic  in  im 
pulse  and  local  in  detail.  We  have  stories  of  decaying  New 
England,  stories  of  the  Middle  West,  stories  of  the  Ohio 
region  and  Chicago  stories,  stories  of  the  Southwest,  stories  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains  and  of  California,  of  Virginia  and  of 
Georgia.  In  plot  these  generally  seem  conventionally  insig 
nificant.  Their  characters,  too,  have  hardly  reached  such 
development  as  to  become  recognised  national  types.  These 
characters,  however,  are  often  typical  of  the  regions  which 
have  suggested  them ;  and  the  description  of  these  regions  is 
frequently  rendered  in  elaborate  detail  with  workmanlike 
effectiveness.  On  the  whole,  like  all  the  literature  of  the 
moment,  in  England  and  in  America  alike,  these  short  stories 
lack  distinction.  The  people  who  write  them,  one  is  apt  to 
feel,  are  not  Olympian  in  temper,  but  Bohemian.  Our  Amer- 


THE  PRESENT  TIME 


517 


lean  Bohemia,  however,  is  not  quite  like  that  of  the  old  world  ; 
at  least,  it  is  free  from  the  kind  of  recklessness  which  one  so 
often  associates  with  such  regions;  and  the  writing  of  our 
Bohemians  preserves  something  of  that  artistic  conscience 
which  always  makes  the  form  of  careful  American  work  finer 
than  that  of  prevalent  work  in  the  old  country.  In  the  short 
stories  of  American  magazines,  then,  so  familiar  throughout 
the  United  States,  we  have  a  second  type  of  popular  literature 
not  at  present  developed  into  masterly  form,  but  ready  to  afford 
both  a  vehicle  and  a  public  to  any  writer  of  masterly  power 
who  may  arise. 

We  have  glanced  at  two  of  the  forms  which  seem  growing 
to  literary  ripeness  in  America,  —  the  newspaper  and  the  pop 
ular  magazine.  There  is  only  one  other  form  whose  present 
popularity  is  anything  like  so  considerable ;  this  is  the  stage. 
So  far,  to  be  sure,  the  American  theatre  has  produced  no  work 
which  can  claim  serious  consideration.  During  the  last  half- 
century,  on  the  other  hand,  the  American  stage  has  developed 
all  over  the  country  a  popularity  and  an  organisation  which 
seem  favourable  to  serious  expression  in  the  future.  At  the 
beginning  of  this  century  there  were  very  few  theatres  in  the 
United  States ;  in  many  places,  indeed,  the  popular  prejudice 
against  the  stage  was  as  blind  as  that  of  the  Puritans  who  closed 
the  English  theatres  in  1642.  To-day  travelling  dramatic 
companies  patrol  the  continent.  Every  town  has  its  theatre, 
and  every  theatre  its  audience.  Until  now,  to  be  sure,  the  plays 
most  popular  in  America  have  generally  come  straight  from 
Europe,  and  the  plays  made  here  have  been  apt  unintelligently 
to  follow  European  models.  Now  and  again,  however,  there 
have  appeared  signs  that  various  types  of  American  character 
could  be  represented  on  the  stage  with  great  popular  effect -, 
and  the  rapid  growth  of  the  American  theatre  has  provided  us 
with  an  increasing  number  of  skilful  actors.  A  large  though 
thoughtless  public  of  theatre-goers,  a  school  of  professional 
actors  who  can  intelligently  present  a  wide  variety  of  character, 


518      THE  REST  OF  THE  STORY 

and  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  American  theatrical  men  to  pro 
duce,  amid  stupidly  conventional  surroundings,  vivid  studies 
from  life,  again  represent  conditions  of  promise.  If  a  drama 
tist  of  commanding  power  should  arise  in  this  country,  he 
might  find  ready  more  than  a  few  of  the  conditions  from 
which  lasting  dramatic  literatures  have  flashed  into  existence. 

At  this  moment  newspaper  humour,  the  short  stories  of  the 
magazines,  and  the  popular  stage  seem  the  sources  from  which 
a  characteristic  American  literature  is  most  likely  to  spring. 
The  America  of  the  future  can  , probably  be  expressed  only  in 
some  broadly  popular  form  j  and  these  three  forms  are  the  only 
ones  which  at  present  seem  to  promise  broad  popularity.  At 
present,  however,  none  of  these  forms,  any  more  than  the 
traditional  forms  which  flourished  earlier,  are  copiously  fruit 
ful.  In  America,  as  in  England,  and  indeed  as  in  all  Europe, 
the  last  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  have  seemed  artis 
tically  less  important,  less  significant,  less  lasting,  than  those 
which  lately  preceded.  The  world  is  passing  through  expe 
rience  too  confused,  too  troubled,  too  uncertain,  for  ripe 
expression ;  and  America  seems  more  and  more  growing  to 
be  just  another  part  of  the  world. 


CONCLUSION 


-ft 


CONCLUSION 

THE  literary  history  of  America  is  the  story,  under  new 
conditions,  of  those  ideals  which  a  common  language  has 
compelled  America,  almost  unawares,  to  share  with  England. 
Elusive  though  they  be,  ideals  are  the  souls  of  the  nations 
which  cherish  them,  —  the  living  spirits  which  waken  nation 
ality  into  being,  and  which  often  preserve  its  memory  long 
after  its  life  has  ebbed  away.  Denied  by  the  impatience 
which  will  not  seek  them  where  they  smoulder  beneath  the 
cinders  of  cant,  derided  by  the  near-sighted  wisdom  which  is 
content  with  the  world-old  commonplace  of  how  practice 
must  always  swerve  from  precept,  they  mysteriously,  resur- 
gently  persist. 

The  ideals  which  for  three  hundred  years  America  and 
England  have  cherished,  alike  yet  apart,  are  ideals  of  morality 
and  of  government, —  of  right  and  of  rights.  Whoever  has 
lived  his  conscious  life  in  the  terms  of  our  language,  so  satu 
rated  with  the  temper  and  the  phrases  both  of  the  English 
Bible  and  of  English  Law,  has  perforce  learned  that,  how 
ever  he  may  stray,  he  cannot  escape  the  duty  which 
bids  us  do  right  and  maintain  our  rights.  General  as  these 
phrases  must  seem,  —  common  at  first  glance  to  the  serious 
moments  of  all  men  everywhere,  —  they  have,  for  us  of  Eng 
lish-speaking  race,  a  meaning  peculiarly  our  own.  Though 
Englishmen  have  prated  enough  and  to  spare,  and  though 
Americans  have  declaimed  about  human  rights  more  nebu 
lously  still,  the  rights  for  which  Englishmen  and  Americans 
alike  have  been  eager  to  fight  and  to  die  are  no  prismatic 
fancies  gleaming  through  clouds  of  conflicting  logic  and 
metaphor;  they  are  that  living  body  of  customs  and  duties 


522      LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

and  privileges,  which  a  process  very  like  physical  growth  has 
made  the  vital  condition  of  our  national  existence.  Through 
immemorial  experience,  the  rights  which  we  most  jealously 
cherish  have  proved  themselves  safely  favourable  at  once 
to  prosperity  and  to  righteousness. 

Threatened  throughout  history,  both  from  without  and 
from  within,  these  rights  can  be  preserved  by  nothing  short 
of  eternal  vigilance.  In  this  we  have  been  faithful,  until 
our  deepest  ideal  of  public  duty,  which  marks  Englishmen  and 
Americans  apart  from  others,  and  side  by  side,  has  long 
ago  defined  itself.  The  vitally  growing  rights  bequeathed 
us  by  our  fathers,  we  must  protect,  not  only  from  invasion 
or  aggression  attempted  by  other  races  than  ours,  but  also 
from  the  internal  ravages  both  of  reaction  and  of  revolution. 
In  loyalty  to  this  conception  of  duty,  the  nobler  minds  of 
England  and  of  America  have  always  been  at  one. 

Yet  to  careless  eyes  the  two  countries  have  long  seemed 
parted  by  a  chasm  wider  even  than  the  turbulent  and  foggy 
Atlantic.  Wide  it  has  surely  been,  but  never  so  vague  as 
to  interpose  between  them  the  shoreless  gulf  of  sundered 
principle.  The  differences  which  have  kept  England  and 
America  so  long  distinct  have  arisen  from  no  more  fatal 
cause  than  unwitting  and  temporary  conflicts  of  their  common 
law.  The  origin  of  both  countries,  as  we  know  them  to-day, 
was  the  England  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  with  all  its  sponta 
neity,  all  its  enthusiasm,  all  its  untired  versatility.  From  this 
origin  England  has  sped  faster  and  further  than  America. 
Throughout  two  full  centuries,  then,  America  and  England 
have  faithfully,  honestly  quarrelled  as  to  just  what  rights  and 
liberties  were  truly  sanctioned  by  the  law  which  has  remained 
common  to  both. 

How  their  native  tempers  began  to  diverge  we  have 
already  seen.  During  the  seventeenth  century,  England 
proceeded  from  its  spontaneous,  enthusiastic  Elizabethan  ver 
satility,  through  the  convulsions  of  the  Civil  Wars,  to 


CONCLUSION 


523 


Cromwell's  Commonwealth ;  and  from  the  Commonwealth, 
through  the  baseness  of  the  Restoration  and  the  renewing 
health  of  the  Glorious  Revolution,  to  that  state  of  parliament 
ary  government  which,  in  vitally  altering  form,  still  persists. 
English  literature  meanwhile  proceeded  from  the  age  of 
Shakspere,  through  the  age  of  Milton,  to  the  age  of  Dryden. 
During  this  same  seventeenth  century,  —  the  century  of 
American  immigration,  —  the  course  of  American  history 
was  interrupted  by  no  such  convulsion  as  the  wars  and 
tumults  which  destroyed  Elizabethan  England.  American 
character,  then,  which  from  the  beginning  possessed  its  still 
persistent  power  of  absorbing  immigration,  preserved  much 
of  the  spontaneity,  the  enthusiasm,  and  the  versatility  trans 
ported  hither  from  the  mother  country  when  Virginia  and 
New  England  were  founded.  So  far  as  literature  went, 
meantime,  seventeenth-century  America  expressed  itself 
only  in  occasional  historical  records,  and  in  a  deluge 
of  Calvinistic  theology.  Though  long  since  abated,  these 
first  outpourings  of  New  England  have  left  indelible  traces. 
Partly  to  them,  and  still  more  to  the  devout  source  from 
which  they  welled,  is  due  the  instinctive  devotion  of  America 
to  such  ideals  of  absolute  right  and  truth  as  were  inherent 
in  the  passionate  idealism  of  the  Puritans. 

It  was  here  that  America  most  distinctly  parted  from  the 
mother  country.  In  England,  the  Puritan  Commonwealth, 
with  its  nobly  futile  aspiration  toward  absolute  right,  so  en 
twined  itself  about  the  life  of  Cromwell  that  when  he  died 
it  fell.  In  America  a  similar  commonwealth,  already  deeply 
rooted  when  Cromwell  was  still  a  sturdy  country  gentleman  of 
St.  Ives,  flourished  fruitful  long  after  his  relics  had  been  cast 
out  of  Westminster  Abbey.  Generation  by  generation,  the 
immemorial  custom  of  America,  wherein  America  has  steadily 
discerned  the  features  of  its  ancestral  rights  and  liberties,  grew 
insensibly  to  sanction  more  abstract  ideals  than  ever  long  per 
sisted  in  England. 


524      LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

Whoever  will  thus  interpret  the  seventeenth  century  need 
be  at  little  pains  to  understand  the  century  which  followed. 
The  political  events  of  this  eighteenth  century  — the  century 
of  American  independence  —  forced  England  into  prolonged 
international  isolation ;  and  this,  combined  with  reactionary 
desire  for  domestic  order,  bred  in  British  character  that  insular 
conservatism  still  typified  by  the  portly,  repellent  integrity  of 
John  Bull.  English  literature  meanwhile  proceeded  from  the 
Addisonian  urbanity  of  Queen  Anne's  time,  through  the  pon 
derous  Johnsonian  formality  which  satisfied  the  subjects  of 
George  II.,  to  the  masterly  publicism  of  Burke  and  the 
contagious  popularity  of  Burns. 

Eighteenth-century  America  was  politically  free  from  the 
conditions  which  so  highly  developed  the  peculiar  eccentricities 
of  England.  There  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  American  char 
acter  still  retained  the  spontaneity,  the  enthusiasm,  and  the  ver 
satility  of  the  elder  days  when  it  had  shared  these  traits  with 
the  English.  Nor  is  there  any  wonder  that  Americans  went 
on  traditionally  cherishing  the  fervent  idealism  of  the  immi 
grant  Puritans,  wherein  for  a  while  the  ancestral  English  ideals 
of  right  and  of  rights  had  fused.  Unwittingly  lingering  in 
its  pristine  state,  the  native  character  of  America  became 
less  and  less  like  the  character  which  historical  forces  were 
irresistibly  moulding  in  the  mother  country.  The  traditional 
law  of  America—  the  immemorial  rights,  the  customs  and  the 
liberties,  of  a  newly  conscious  people  eagerly  responsive  to  the 
allurements  of  absolute  truth  —  seemed  on  its  surface  less  arid 
less  like  the  more  dogged  and  rigid  system  which  was  becom 
ing  the  traditional  law  of  England.  When  disputes  arose,  the 
spirit  of  old  Babel  was  reawakened.  Despite  their  common 
language,  neither  of  the  kindred  peoples,  separated  not  only 
by  the  wastes  of  the  ocean  but  also  by  the  forgotten  lapse  of  five 
generations,  could  rightly  understand  the  other.  Dispute 
waxed  fruitlessly  high.  The  inevitable  result  was  the  American 
Revolution. 


CONCLUSION  525 

The  same  causes  which  wrought  this  imperial  disunion  had 
tended  to  alter  the  literary  character  of  America.  American 
theology  had  already  evaporated  in  metaphysical  abstraction ;  its 
place,  as  the  principal  phase  of  American  expression,  had  been 
taken  by  politics.  Of  this,  no  doubt,  the  animating  ideal  was 
not  so  much  that  of  morality  as  that  of  law ;  the  writings  of 
eighteenth-century  America  have  less  concern  with  right  than 
with  rights.  Yet  America  would  not  have  been  America  unless 
these  ancestral  ideals  had  remained  blended.  A  yearning  for 
absolute  truth,  an  unbroken  faith  in  abstract  ideals,  is  what 
makes  distinctly  national  the  political  utterances  of  the  Amer 
ican  Revolution.  The  love  of  abstract  right  which  pervades 
them  sprang  straight  from  that  aspiration  toward  absolute  truth 
which  had  animated  the  grim  idealism  of  the  Puritans. 

So  came  the  nineteenth  century,  —  the  century  of  American 
nationality,  when,  for  all  their  community  of  language  and  of 
ideals,  England  and  America  have  believed  themselves  mutually 
foreign.  English  history  has  proceeded  from  the  extreme  iso 
lation  which  ended  at  Waterloo,  through  the  constitutional 
revolution  of  the  Reform  Bill  to  the  present  reign.  What  the 
future  may  decide  to  have  been  the  chief  features  of  this  Vic 
torian  epoch,  it  is  still  too  soon  to  assert ;  yet,  whatever  else, 
the  future  can  hardly  fail  to  remember  how,  throughout  these 
sixty  and  more  years,  England  has  continually  developed  in 
two  seemingly  divergent  ways.  At  home,  on  the  one  hand,  it 
has  so  tended  toward  democracy  that  already  the  political 
power  of  the  English  masses  probably  exceeds  that  of  the 
American.  In  its  world  relations,  on  the  other  hand,  England 
has  become  imperial  to  a  degree  undreamed  of  when  Queen 
Victoria  ascended  the  throne.  Wherever  the  influence  of 
England  extends  to-day,  democracy  and  empire  go  hand  in 
hand. 

Throughout  this  nineteenth  century,  America  has  had  the 
Western  Hemisphere  almost  to  itself.  This  it  has  dominated 
with  increasing  material  power,  believing  all  the  while  that  it 


526      LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

could  keep  free  from  entanglement  with  other  regions  of  the 
earth.  From  this  youthful  dream  it  has  at  last  been  rudely 
awakened.  In  the  dawning  of  a  new  century,  it  finds  itself  — 
like  England,  at  once  democratic  and  imperial — inevitably 
confronted  with  world  conflict ;  either  its  ideals  must  prevail, 
or  they  must  perish.  After  three  centuries  of  separation,  then, 
England  and  America  are  once  more  side  by  side.  With 
them,  in  union,  lies  the  hope  of  imperial  democracy. 

It  is  only  during  the  nineteenth  century  —  the  century  of 
American  nationality  —  that  America  has  brought  forth  liter 
ature.  First  appearing  in  the  Middle  States,  this  soon  devel 
oped  more  seriously  in  New  England,  whose  mental  life,  so 
active  at  first,  had  lain  comparatively  dormant  for  almost  a 
hundred  years.  These  two  phases  of  American  literary  ex 
pression,  the  only  ones  which  may  as  yet  be  regarded  as  com 
plete,  have  been  the  chief  subject  of  our  study.  On  the  im 
pression  which  they  have  left  with  us  must  rest  our  estimate  of 
what  the  literature  produced  in  America  has  hitherto  signified. 

To  define  this  impression,  we  may  helpfully  glance  back  at 
what  the  nineteenth  century  added  to  the  literature  of  Eng 
land.  First  came  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge 
ind  Shelley  and  Keats  and  Byron,  —  a  poetry,  for  all  its 
individual  variety,  aflame  with  the  spirit  of  world-revolution. 
Then,  just  after  Waterloo,  came  those  bravely  ideal  retro 
spective  romances  which  have  immortalised  the  name  of 
Scott.  He  died  in  1832,  the  year  of  the  Reform  Bill.  The 
later  literature  of  England  has  expressed  the  meanings  of  life 
discerned  and  felt  by  men  whose  mature  years  have  fallen 
within  the  democratic  and  imperial  reign  of  Queen  Victoria. 
This  literature  includes  the  great  modern  novelists,  —  Dick 
ens  and  Thackeray  and  George  Eliot,  with  their  host  of  con 
temporaries  and  followers ;  it  includes  the  poetry  of  Tennyson, 
and  of  the  Brownings,  and  of  more ;  it  includes  a  wealth  of 
serious  prose,  the  work  of  Macaulay,of  Carlyle,  of  Ruskin,  of 
Newman,  of  Matthew  Arnold,  and  of  numberless  others  ;  it 


CONCLUSION  527 

includes  the  studied  and  fastidious  refinement  of  Steven 
son  ;  it  still  happily  includes  the  scope  and  power  of  writers 
now  living. 

In  the  nineteenth  century  English  literature  began  with  a 
passionate  outburst  of  aspiring  romantic  poetry ;  it  passed  into 
an  era  of  retrospective  romantic  prose  ;  it  proceeded  to  a 
stage  where,  for  all  the  merit  of  persistent  poetry,  the  chief 
fact  seems  to  have  been  fiction  dealing  mostly  with  contempo 
rary  life ;  its  serious  prose,  all  the  while,  tended  more  and 
more  to  dwell  on  the  problems  of  the  times  ;  and  these  surely 
underlie  the  utterances  of  its  latest  masters.  The  more  one 
considers  what  the  century  has  added  to  English  literature,  the 
more  one  marvels  at  its  riches.  Yet  all  the  while  one  grows 
aware  of  something  which,  if  not  a  loss,  is  at  least  a  change. 
Throughout  the  century,  English  letters  have  slowly  lapsed 
away  from  the  grace  of  personal  distinction.  The  literature 
of  nineteenth-century  England,  like  its  history,  expresses  an 
irresistible  advance  of  democracy 

Political  democracy,  no  doubt,  declared  itself  earlier  and 
more  outspokenly  in  America  than  in  England.  So  far  as 
literature  is  concerned,  on  the  other  hand,  the  first  thirty 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century  excited  from  America  much 
less  democratic  utterances  than  came  from  the  revolutionary 
poets  of  the  mother  country.  If  you  doubt  this,  compare 
Brockden  Brown  with  Wordsworth,  Irving  with  Coleridge, 
Cooper  with  Shelley,  Bryant  with  Byron.  What  that  earlier 
literature  of  the  Middle  States  chiefly  certifies  of  American 
character  is  the  trait  which  so  far  has  most  surely  controlled 
the  progress  of  the  United  States  :  whatever  our  vagaries  of 
occasional  speech,  we  Americans  are  at  heart  disposed,  with  good 
old  English  common-sense,  to  follow  those  lines  of  conduct 
which  practice  has  proved  safe  and  which  prudence  has  pro 
nounced  admirable.  The  earlier  literature  of  the  Middle 
States  has  another  trait  which  seems  nationally  characteristic  : 
its  sensitiveness  of  artistic  conscience  shows  Americans  gener- 


528      LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

ally  to  be  more  alive  to  artistic  duty  than  Englishmen  have 
often  been.  The  first  literary  utterances  of  inexperienced 
America  were  marked  by  no  wildness  or  vagary  ;  they  showed, 
rather,  an  almost  timid  loyalty  to  the  traditions  of  excellence. 

A  few  years  later  came  what  so  far  seems  the  nearest  ap 
proach  of  America  to  lasting  literature,  —  the  final  utterances 
of  New  England  during  the  years  of  its  Renaissance,  which, 
broadly  speaking,  were  contemporary  with  the  first  half  of  the 
reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  The  new  life  had  begun,  of  course, 
somewhat  earlier.  It  had  first  shown  itself  in  the  awaken 
ing  of  New  England  oratory  and  scholarship,  and  in  the  ardour 
which  stirred  Unitarianism  to  break  the  fetters  of  Calvinistic 
dogma.  Scholarship  bore  fruit  in  the  later  works  of  the  New 
England  historians.  Unitarianism  tended,  through  Tran 
scendentalism,  to  militant,  disintegrating  reform.  Amid  these 
freshening  intellectual  surroundings  appeared  some  men  whose 
names  seem  destined  at  least  for  a  while  to  live  in  the  records 
of  literature.  The  chief  of  these  were  Emerson  and  Whit- 
tier  and  Longfellow  and  Lowell  and  Holmes  and  Hawthorne. 
If  you  will  compare  them  with  the  writers  who  in  their  time 
were  most  eminent  in  England,  —  with  Dickens,  Thackeray, 
and  George  Eliot,  with  Tennyson  and  the  Brownings,  with 
Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  with  Newman  and  Matthew  Arnold,  — 
you  can  hardly  help  feeling  a  difference,  palpable  even  though 
indistinct,  undeniable  even  though  hard  to  define. 

One  phase  of  this  difference  soon  grows  clear.  Though 
the  writers  of  renascent  New  England  were  generally  better 
in  prose  than  in  poetry,  —  and  thus  resembled  their  English 
contemporaries,  —  their  spirit  was  rather  like  that  which  had 
animated  the  fervent  English  poetry  of  a  generation  before. 
One  and  all  of  them,  accepting  the  revolutionary  doctrine  that 
human  nature  is  not  evil  but  good,  confidently  hoped  that 
illimitable  development  was  at  hand  for  a  humanity  finally 
freed  from  the  shackles  of  outworn  custom.  In  this  faith  and 
hope,  the  men  of  the  New  England  Renaissance  were  sustained 


CONCLUSION  529 

by  a  fact  never  true  of  any  other  civilised  society  than  that 
from  which  they  sprung.  For  more  than  two  hundred  years, 
national  inexperience  had  protected  American  character  from 
such  distortion  as  the  pressure  of  dense  population  always 
twists  into  human  nature.  With  a  justified  enthusiasm,  then, 
the  literary  leaders  of  New  England,  full  of  the  earnest  ideal 
ism  inseparable  from  their  Puritan  ancestry,  and  finally  es 
caped  from  the  dogmas  which  had  reviled  humanity,  fervently 
proclaimed  democracy.  And  here,  at  first,  their  temper  seems 
to  linger  a  little  behind  that  of  the  mother  country.  The 
undimmed  confidence  of  their  faith  in  human  nature  is  like 
that  which  was  beginning  to  fade  from  English  literature 
before  the  death  of  Scott. 

Yet  these  New  England  writers  were  no  mere  exotic 
survivors  of  the  days  when  English  Romanticism  was  fervid. 
They  were  all  true  Americans ;  and  this  they  could  not  have 
been  without  an  almost  rustic  limitation  of  worldly  knowledge, 
without  a  shrewd  sense  of  fact  which  should  at  once  correct 
the  errors  of  such  ignorance  and  check  the  vagaries  of  their 
idealism,  or  without  exacting  artistic  conscience.  Their  devo 
tion  to  the  ideals  of  right  and  of  rights  came  straight  from 
ancestral  England.  Their  spontaneous  aptitude  for  idealism, 
their  enthusiastic  love  for  abstractions  and  for  absolute  truth, 
they  had  derived,  too,  from  the  Elizabethan  Puritans  whose 
traits  they  had  hereditarily  preserved.  What  most  surely 
marked  them  apart  was  the  quality  of  their  eager  faith  in 
democracy.  To  them  this  was  no  untested  dream;  it  was 
rather  a  truth  confirmed  by  the  national  inexperience  of  their 
still  uncrowded  country.  Hence  sprang  the  phase  of  their 
democratic  temper  which  still  seems  most  precious  and  most 
pregnant. 

The  spirit  of  European  democracy  has  been  dominated  by 
blind  devotion  to  an  enforced  equality.  In  many  American 
utterances  you  may  doubtless  find  thoughtless  assertion  of  the 
same  dogma.  Yet  if  you  will  ponder  on  the  course  of 

34 


530      LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

American  history,  and  still  more  if  you  will  learn  intimately 
to  know  those  more  eminent  American  men  of  letters  who 
remain  the  living  teachers  of  our  growing  country,  you  must 
grow  to  feel  that  American  democracy  has  a  wiser  temper, 
still  its  own.  The  national  ideal  of  America  has  never  yet 
denied  or  even  repressed  the  countless  variety  of  human 
worth  and  power.  It  has  urged  only  that  men  should  enjoy 
liberty  within  the  range  of  law.  It  has  resisted  both  lingering 
and  innovating  tyranny  j  but  all  the  while  it  has  kept  faithful 
to  the  principle  that,  so  far  as  public  safety  may  permit,  each 
of  us  has  an  inalienable  right  to  strive  for  excellence.  In  the 
presence  of  approved  excellence  it  has  remained  humble. 

The  history  of  such  future  as  we  can  now  discern  must  be 
that  of  a  growing  world-democracy.  The  most  threatening 
future  danger,  then,  is  often  held  to  lurk  in  those  dogged  sys 
tems  of  authority  which  still  strive  to  strangle  humane  aspira 
tion.  No  doubt  these  are  dangerous,  yet  sometimes  there 
must  seem  even  deeper  danger  in  that  crescent  phase  of 
democracy  itself  which  hates  and  condemns  excellence.  If 
in  the  conflicts  to  come,  democracy  shall  overpower  excellence, 
or  if  excellence,  seeking  refuge  in  freshly  imperious  assertion 
of  authority,  shall  prove  democracy  another  futile  dream,  the 
ways  before  us  are  dark.  The  more  one  dreads  such  dark 
ness,  the  more  gleams  of  counsel  and  help  one  may  find  in  the 
simple,  hopeful  literature  of  inexperienced,  renascent  New 
England.  There,  for  a  while,  the  warring  ideals  of  democracy 
and  of  excellence  were  once  reconciled,  dwelling  confidently 
together  in  some  earthly  semblance  of  peace. 


AUTHORITIES   AND    REFERENCES 


AUTHORITIES    AND    REFERENCES 

THE  following  memoranda  indicate,  first,  the  chief  general  authorities 
on  the  whole  matter  in  hand ;  secondly,  the  principal  accessible 
authorities  on  the  special  topics  discussed  in  the  successive  books  and 
chapters ;  and  thirdly,  the  most  authoritative  and  available  editions  of 
the  principal  works  mentioned  in  the  text.  For  convenience,  they 
are  arranged  under  the  following  heads  :  I.  General  Authorities  ; 
II.  Special  Authorities  for  each  book  and  for  each  chapter. 

Without  pretending  to  be  exhaustive,  these  memoranda  should  serve 
as  guides  to  those  who  desire  further  to  investigate  the  matter  touched 
on.  In  general,  they  call  attention  to  accessible  bibliographies. 

I.     GENERAL  AUTHORITIES 

1.  For  English  History,  so  far  as  it  concerns  us,   any   standard 
authority  should  serve  ;  for  example,  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 

2.  For  English  Literature,  in  general,  the  best  books  seem  — 
STOPFORD  BROOKE  :   Primer  of  English  Literature,  1889. 
HENRY  CRAIK  :   English  Prose,  etc.,  5  vols.,  1893-96. 
FREDERICK   RYLAND  :    Chronological  Outlines   of  English  Literature, 

1896. 
THOMAS  H.  WARD  :   English  Poets,  4  vols.,  1896-1900. 

3.  For  American   History,    the  following  works  should  serve  as 
general  guides  :  — 

EDWARD  CHANNING  :  A  Students*  History  of  the  United  States,  New 

York,  1899. 
EDWARD    CHANNING  and   ALBERT    BUSHNELL    HART  :    Guide  to  the 

Study  of  American  History,  Boston,  1896. 
JUSTIN  WINSOR  [editor]  :  Narrative  and  Critical  History  of  America, 

8  vols.,  Boston,  1886-89. 

4.  For  literature  in  America,  among  numerous  works,  the  follow 
ing  seem  perhaps  the  most  useful :  — 


534       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

a.  Histories  of  Literature  :  — 

J.  NICHOL:   American  Literature,  Edinburgh,  1882. 

H.  S.  PANCOAST  :   Introduction  to  American  Literature,   New  York, 

1898. 

C.  F.  RICHARDSON:  American  Literature,  2  vols.,  New  York,  1887. 
E.  C.  STEDMAN  :   Poets  of  America,  Boston,  1885. 
M.  C.  TYLER  :   A  History  of  American  Literature  during  the  Colonial 

Time,  2  vols.,  New  York,  1897.      [Vol.  I.,   1607-76  ;  Vol.  II., 

1676-1765.] 
M.  C.  TYLER  :    The  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution,  2 

vols.,  New  York,  1897. 

BARRETT  WENDELL  :   Stelligeri,  etc.,  New  York,  1893. 
GREENOUGH  WHITE  :   Sketch  of  the  Philosophy  of  American  Literature, 

Boston,  1891. 

b.  Collections  of  Extracts  :  — 

G.  R.  CARPENTER:   American  Prose,  New  York,  1898. 

E.  A.  and  G.   L.  DUYCKINCK  :    Cyclopedia  of  American  Literature, 

2  vols.,  Philadelphia,  1875. 
R.  W.  GRISWOLD  :    The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,  Philadelphia, 

1842. 

R.  W.  GRISWOLD:   Prose  Writers  of  America,  Philadelphia,  1847. 
R.  W.  GRISWOLD:   Female  Poets  of  America,  Philadelphia,  1848. 
E.  C.  STEDMAN  :  An  American  Anthology,  Boston,  1900. 
E.  C.  STEDMAN  and  ELLEN  M.   HUTCHINSON  :   Library  of  American 

Literature,  n  vols.,  New  York,  1888-90. 

c.  Bibliography  and  Chronology  :  — 

P.  K.  FOLEY  :  American  Authors  1795-1895,  etc.,  Boston,  Privately 

Printed,  1897. 
S.   L.    WHITCOMB  :    Chronological  Outlines  of  American   Literature, 

New  York,  1 894. 


II.     SPECIAL   AUTHORITIES 

INTRODUCTION 

For  a  more  complete  statement  of  the  theory  of  literary  evo 
lution,  see  B.  WENDELL:  William  Shakspere,  New  York,  1894, 
pp.  401  ff. 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       535 


BOOK  I.     THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

ENGLISH  HISTORY  FROM   1600  TO   1700 
Book  I.  Chapter  I. 

See  third  paragraph  of  the  bibliography  at  the  end  of  JOHN  FISKE'S 
Beginnings  of  New  England,  Boston,  1889.  The  great  books  on 
this  period  are,  of  course,  S.  R.  GARDINER'S  History  of  England 
from  the  Accession  of  James  I.  to  the  Outbreak  of  the  Civil  War, 
1603-1642,  10  vols.,  London,  1883-84,  and  his  History  of  the 
Great  Civil  War,  1642—1649,  3  vols.,  London,  1886-91.  DAVID 
MASSON'S  Life  of  John  Milton:  with  the  Political,  Ecclesiastical, 
and  Literary  History  of  his  Time  [1608-1674],  6  vols.,  London, 
1859—80,  is  a  work  of  great  learning. 

ENGLISH  LITERATURE  FROM   1600  TO   1700 

Book  I.  Chapter  II. 

In  addition  to  the  general  authorities  may  be  mentioned  GEORGE 
SAINTSBURY'S  A  History  of  Elizabethan  Literature,  London,  1887, 
and  A.  W.  WARD'S  A  History  of  English  Dramatic  Literature  to  the 
Death  of  Queen  Anne,  3  vols.,  London,  1 899. 

AMERICAN  HISTORY  FROM   1600  TO   1700 

Book  I.  Chapter  III. 

Of  the  books  mentioned  in  the  text,  the  best  editions  are :  — 
WILLIAM    BRADFORD  :    History  of  Plymouth  Plantation,   ed.    Charles 
Deane,  Boston,  1856.     Reprinted  from  the  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Col 
lections.     There  is  also  a  serviceable  edition  of  the  text,  with  some 
interesting  matter  concerning  the  return  of  the  Bradford  MS.,  pub 
lished  by  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts,  Boston,  1898. 
SAMUEL  SEWALL'S   Diary  (1674—1729),   3  vols.,  Boston,  1878—82. 

[Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Collections,  5th  series,  Vols.  V.-VIL] 
JOHN  WINTHROP  :   History  of  New  England,  ed.  James  Savage,  2  vols., 
Boston,  1853.     The  best  biography  of  Winthrop  is  the  Life  and 
Letters  of  John  Winthrop,  ed.  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  Boston,  1864 
(copyrighted  1863). 


536       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 
LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  FROM   1600  TO   1700 

Book  I.  Chapter  IV. 

For  the  literary  history  of  America  in  the  seventeenth  century 
TYLER'S  first  two  volumes  are  almost  sufficient.  One  may  note  also 
JOSIAH  QUINCY'S  History  of  Harvard  University,  2  vols.,  Cambridge, 
1840,  and  J.  L.  SIBLEY'S  Harvard  Graduates,  3  vols.,  Cambridge, 
1873-85. 

A  literal  reprint  of  the  first  edition  of  the  Bay  Psalm  Book  was 
made  at  Cambridge  in  1862,  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  N.  B. 
Bay  Psalm  Shurtleff.  See  TYLER  :  History  of  American  Literature 
Book-  during  the  Colonial  Time,  etc.,  Vol.  I.  pp.  274-277  ;  WIN- 

SOR  :  Memorial  History  of  Boston,  Vol.  I.  pp.  458—60;  WILBERFORCE 
EAMES  :  A  List  of  Editions  of  the  t(  Bay  Psalm  Book,"  etc.,  New 
York,  1885.  STEDMAN  AND  HUTCHINSON'S  Library,  Vol.  I.  pp.  211 
ff.,  contains  extracts. 

The  Works  of  Anne  Bradstreet  in  Prose  and  Verse,  edited  by  JOHN 

HARVARD  ELLIS,  were  published  at  Charlestown  in  1867.      There  is 

Mrs.  Brad-    a^so  a  handsome  edition  entitled    The  Poems  of  Mrs.  Anne 

Bradstreet  (1612—1672),  with  an  introduction  by  Prof. 

C.  E.  NORTON  [privately  printed],  1897. 

jj  £  On  the  New  England  Primer,  see  PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD'S 

Primer'  The  New  England  Primer;  History  of  its  Origin  and  De 
velopment,  etc.,  New  York,  1897. 

Ovid's    Metamorphosis   englished  by    G.    S.    [GEORGE 
SANDYS]  appeared  at  London,  in  folio,  1626.      [Br.  Mus. 
Catalogue.] 

On  the  works   of  John  Smith  see   WINSOR'S   America,  Vol.  III. 

Chap.  V.  ;  also  the  "Note  on  Smith's  Publications,"  ibid., 
Smltn. 

pp.  21 1-2 1 2.  The  most  accessible  edition  of  Smith's  writ 
ings  is  that  by  Arber  in  the  «  English  Scholar's  Library,"  Birmingham, 
1884. 

Of  Wigglesworth  there  is  nothing  in  print.  Professor  Tyler  says 
(Vol.  II.  p.  34)  :  «  The  eighteen  hundred  copies  of  the  first  edition  [of 
Wiggles-  tne  Day  of  Doom']  were  sold  within  a  single  year  ;  which 

implies  the  purchase  of  a  copy  ...  by  at  least  every  thirty- 
fifth  person  then  in  New  England,  —  an  example  of  the  commercial 
success  of  a  book  never  afterward  equalled  in  this  country.  Since  that 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       537 

time,  the  book  has  been  repeatedly  published,  at  least  once  in  England, 
and  at  least  eight  times  in  America  —  the  last  time  being  in  1867." 
This  edition  of  1867  was  published  at  New  York  and  contained  a 
memoir  by  J.  W.  Dean.  The  chief  biography  of  Wiggles  worth, 
JOHN  WARD  DEAN'S  Memoir  of  the  Rev.  Michael  Wigglesworth, 
Author  of  the  Day  of  Doom,  Albany,  1863,  contains  (pp.  140—151) 
a  note  on  "Editions  of  Wiggles  worth's  Poems." 

COTTON    MATHER 
Book  I.  Chapter  V. 

The  life  and  works  of  Cotton  Mather  are  adequately  discussed  in 
the  Rev.  ABIJAH  PERKINS  MARVIN'S   The  Life  and  Times  of  Cotton 
Mather,    Boston   [1892],    and    in    BARRETT    WENDELL'S    (^tton 
Cotton   Mather,  the   Puritan   Priest,  New  York   [1891].    Mather. 
Professor  Wendell's  book  has  a  list  of  authorities  on  pages  309  and 
310;   SIBLEY'S  Harvard  Graduates,  Vol.   III.  pp.   42-158,  has  an 
elaborate  Mather  bibliography.     The  Magnalia  has  twice  been  re 
printed  in  America:  once  in   1820  at  Hartford,  Conn.,  in  2  vols., 
8vo,  and   again  in  the  same  form  and  at  the  same  place  in   1853. 
There  is  now  no  accessible  edition. 


BOOK   II.     THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

ENGLISH  HISTORY  FROM   1700  TO   1800 
Book  II.  Chapter  I. 

The  great  book  on  English  history  in  the  eighteenth  century  is 
W.  E.  H.  LECKY'S  A  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
8  vols.,  1878-90.  LORD  MAHON'S  History  of  England  from  the 
Peace  of  Utrecht  to  the  Peace  of  Versailles,  1713-1783,  7  vols., 
1853—54,  is  also  valuable. 

ENGLISH  LITERATURE  FROM   1700  TO   1800 
Book  II.  Chapter  II. 

For  the  outlines  of  English  literary  history  in  the  eighteenth  century 
the  following  will  serve  tolerably  well :  ALEXANDRE  BELJAME  :  Le 
Public  et  les  Hommes  de  Lettres  en  Angleterre  au  Dix-huitieme  Siecle 
(1660-1744),  Paris,  1881;  EDMUND  GOSSE  :  A  History  of  Eigh- 


538       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

teenth    Century    Literature,    London,     1889;    THOMAS    S.    PERRY: 
English  Literature  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  New  York,  1883. 

AMERICAN  HISTORY  FROM   1700  TO   1800 
Book  II.  Chapter  III. 

For  American  history  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  general  authori 
ties  —  Channing,  Channing  and  Hart's  Guide,  and  Winsor  —  will 
amply  suffice.  For  religious  matters,  see  G.  L.  WALKER'S  Some 
Aspects  of  the  Religious  History  of  New  England,  with  Special  Refer 
ence  to  Congregationalists,  Boston,  1897. 

LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  FROM   1700  TO   1776 
Book  II.  Chapter  IV. 

On  the  literary  history  of  America  in  the  eighteenth  century  the 
standard  authority  is  Professor  Tyler,  the  second,  third,  and  fourth 
volumes  of  whose  work  admirably  cover  the  period  from  the  beginning 
of  the  century  through  the  year  1783. 

JOHN  WOOLMAN'S  Journal,  with  an  introduction  by  John  G.  Whit- 
tier,  was  published  at  Boston  in  1871.  On  Woolman's  life  and 
writings,  see  TYLER'S  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution, 
Chap.  XXXVII. 

Of  THOMAS  HUTCHINSON' s  History  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusets- 
Bay  (Vol.  I.  Boston,  1764;  Vol.  II.  Boston,  1767;  Vol.  III.  Lon- 
»r  x  t,  don,  1828),  the  first  two  volumes  have  been  out  of  print 

ttutcninson. 

for  over  a  century,  the  last  edition  having  been  published 
at  Salem  and  Boston  in  1795  ;  the  third  volume  is  to  be  found  only  in 
the  London  edition  of  1828.  For  biographical  detail,  see  The  Diary 
and  Letters  of  His  Excellency  Thomas  Hutchinson,  Esq.,  ed.  P.  O. 
Hutchinson,  2  vols.,  Boston,  1884-86.  The  late  Charles  Deane 
compiled  a  Hutchinson  bibliography  which  was  privately  printed  at 
Boston  in  1857. 

JONATHAN    EDWARDS 

Book  II.  Chapter  V. 

Professor  ALLEN  writes:  "The  first  edition  of  Edwards'  works 
was  published  in  Worcester,  Mass.,  in  8  vols.,  1809  ;  afterwards  re- 
published  in  4  vols.  It  is  still  in  print,  the  plates  being  owned,  it  is 
said,  by  Carter  Bros.,  New  York.  Dr.  Dwight's  edition  was  pub 
lished  m  New  York  in  1829,  in  jo  vols.,  the  first  volume  being 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES        539 

occupied  with  the  life.  There  is  a  London  edition  in  8  vols.  by 
Williams,  1817;  vols.  9  and  I  o  supplementary  by  Ogle,  Edinburgh, 
1847.  Another  London  edition  in  2  vols.,  bearing  the  imprint  of 
Bohn,  is  still  in  print,  and  though  cumbrous  in  form  is  in  many 
respects  excellent.  It  possesses  the  only  portrait  of  Edwards  which 
answers  to  one's  idea  of  the  man."  The  best  biography  of  Edwards 
is  Prof.  A.  V.  G.  ALLEN'S  Jonathan  Edwards,  Boston,  1889;  it 
contains  (pp.  391-393)  a  good  bibliography.  One  should  also  note 
the  essays  on  Edwards  by  Holmes  (Works,  Riverside  ed.,  Vol. 
VIII.  pp.  361—401)  and  by  Leslie  Stephen  (Hours  in  a  Library, 
zd  series,  Chap.  II.,  London,  1876). 

BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN 

Book  II.  Chapter  VI. 

Of  Franklin's  works  the  best  edition  is  that  by  JOHN  BIGELOW,  I  o 
vols.,  New  York,  1887-88.  Of  Franklin's  own  Life  the  best  edition 
is  that  by  John  Bigelow,  in  3  vols.,  Philadelphia,  1875.  The  best 
biographies  of  Franklin  seem  those  of  Prof.  JOHN  BACH  MCMASTER, 
in  the  series  of  American  Men  of  Letters,  Boston,  1887,  and  of 
JOHN  T.  MORSE,  Jr.,  in  the  American  Statesmen  series,  Boston, 
1889.  PAUL  LEICESTER  FORD  has  compiled  a  Franklin  Bibliography, 
Brooklyn,  1889. 

THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 
Book  II.  Chapter  VII. 

On  the  literary  aspect  of  the  American  Revolution,  Professor 
TYLER'S  volumes  are  the  best  authority;  for  its  history,  JOHN  FISKE'S 
American  Revolution,  2  vols.,  Boston,  1892,  is  entertaining  and  sug 
gestive,  while  WINSOR'S  Reader's  Handbook  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion  (1761-1783},  Boston,  1880,  points  the  way  to  the  authorities 
for  study  in  detail.  Dr.  S.  WEIR  MITCHELL'S  Hugh  Wynne  is  so 
accurate  and  vivid  a  fiction  as  to  have  the  value  of  an  authority. 

The  writings  of  JAMES  OTIS  have  never  been  collected.      For  notes 
on  his  various  speeches  and  articles,  see  WINSOR'S  Reader's  Handbook, 
pp.  1-2,  and  his  America,  Vol.  VI.  pp.  68-70.     Biographies    ^ 
of  Otis  have  been  written  by  William  Tudor,  Boston,  1823, 
and  by  Francis  Bowen  in  SPARKS'S  Library  of  American  Biography,  2d 
series,  Vol.  II.,  Boston,  1847. 


540       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

m  _*  ,.  «*         On  the  "  Westchester  Farmer/*  see  WINSOR'S  America, 

westciiester 

Farmer.        Vol.  VI.  p.   104. 

The  Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Occasional  Writings  of  Francis  Hop- 
kinson,  in  3  vols.  were  published  at  Philadelphia  in   1792. 
Hopkinson.    Qn  Hopkinson's  life  and  writings,  see  TYLER:    Literary 
History  of  the  American  Revolution,  Chap.  XXX. 

LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  FROM   1776  TO   1800 
Book  II.  Chapter  VIII. 

On  the  general  conditions  of  life  in  America  between  the  close  of 
the  Revolution  and  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  see 
HENRY  ADAMS'S  History  of  the  United  States,  9  vols.,  New  York, 
1889-91. 

On  the  Federalist  group,  the  chief  authorities  are  The  Federalist, 
etc.,  ed.  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  New  York,  1898;  The  Works  of 
Alexander  Hamilton,  ed.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  9  vols., 
New  York,  1885-86;  Madison's  Papers,  .  .  .  being  bis 
Correspondence  and  Reports  of  Debates,  ed.  Henry  D.  Gilpin,  3 
vols.,  Washington,  1840,  and  his  Letters  and  Other  Writings,  4  vols., 
Philadelphia,  1865;  The  Correspondence  and  Public  Papers  of  John 
Jay,  ed.  Henry  P.  Johnston,  4  vols.,  New  York,  1890.  For  bio 
graphical  detail,  see  HENRY  CABOT  LODGE'S  Alexander  Hamilton,  Bos 
ton,  1882  (American  Statesmen  series)  ;  WILLIAM  C.  RIVES' s  History 
of  the  Life  and  Times  of  James  Madison,  3  vols.,  Boston,  1859-68  ; 
SYDNEY  HOWARD  GAY'S  James  Madison,  Boston,  1884  (American 
Statesmen  series),  and  GEORGE  PELLEW'S  John  Jay,  Boston,  1890 
(American  Statesmen  series).  Copious  bibliographic  detail  will  be 
found  in  WINSOR'S  America,  Vol.  VII.  pp.  259-260,  and  in  PAUL 
LEICESTER  FORD'S  Bib  Hot  be  ca  Hamiltoniana,  New  York,  printed  for 
the  author,  1886. 

A  sufficient  notion  of  CREVEOEUR  may  be  got  from  TYLER  :  Liter 
ary  History  of  the  American  Revolution,  Vol.  II.  pp.  347-358,  and 
Crevecce  Stedmanand  Hutchinson's  Library,  Vol.  III.  pp.  138-146. 
Crevecceur's  Letters  from  an  American  Farmer  were  pub 
lished  at  London  in  1782  ;  there  is  a  French  translation  in  two  vol 
umes,  published  at  Paris  in  1784. 

Selections  from  the  writings  of  the  "Hartford  Wits"  are  given  in 
the  third  volume  of  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  Library;  while  Pro- 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       541 

fessor  Tyler's  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution    Hartford 
discusses   their  work   at  some  length.      For  an  interesting    wits* 
monograph  on  the  Hartford  Wits,  see  F.  SHELDON  :    The  Pleiades  of 
Connecticut,  Atlantic  Monthly,  Vol.  XV.  p.  187  (Feb.,  1865). 

TIMOTHY  D WIGHT'S  works  are  not  in  print.     Original  editions  of 
importance  are  :  The  Triumph  of  Infidelity  :  A  Poem.    Printed  in  the 
World,    1788;    The   Conquest  of  Canaan:   A   Poem,    in 
Eleven  Books,  Hartford,  1785;   Greenfield  Hill ':  A  Poem, 
in  Seven  Parts,  New  York,  1794  '•>   Travels  in  New  England  and  New 
York  (1796-1815},  4  vols.,   New  Haven,    1821-22.     For  further 
details,  see  Professor  Tyler's  excellent  Three  Men  of  Letters  [Berkeley, 
D wight,  Barlow],  New  York,  1895,  pp.  184-185. 

The  Poetical  Works  of  Jonathan  Trumbull,  LL.D.,  were  published 
at  Hartford  in    1820.      Notable  editions  of  M '  Fingal  are  the  first, 

M'Fingal:  a  Modern  Epic  Poem,  in  Four   Cantos,  Hart- 

Xmniutill* 

ford,  1782,  i6mo  ;  the  sixth,  London,  1793,  with  explana 
tory  notes  by  Joel  Barlow  ;  and  an  edition  with  introduction  and  notes 
by  B.  J.  Lossing,  New  York,  1880. 

Of  JOEL  BARLOW'S  writings  no  edition  is  in  print.  For 
bibliography  and  other  details,  see  TYLER'S  Three  Men  of 
Letters,  pp.  131-183. 

The  writings  of  FRENEAU  are  no  longer  in  print.      Among  early 
editions  should  be  noted  Miscellaneous  Works  of  Mr.  Philip  Freneau, 
Containing  his  Essays  and  Additional  Poems,   Philadelphia, 
1788;  Poems  Written  between  the   Tear s  1768  a nd  1794, 
Monmouth,  1795  ;   Poems  Written  and  Published  during  the  Amer 
ican   Revolutionary    War  .  .  .   and  Other    Pieces  not   heretofore   in 
Print,  2  vols.,  Philadelphia,  1809.      On  Campbell's  borrowings  from 
Freneau,  see  TYLER  :   Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution, 
Vol.  I.  pp.  177  ff. 

BOOK   III.     THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 
ENGLISH  HISTORY  SINCE   1800 

Book  III.  Chapter  I. 

For  English  history  in  the  nineteenth  century,  the  general  refer 
ence  will  suffice. 


542       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 
ENGLISH  LITERATURE  SINCE   1800 

Book  III.  Chapter  II. 

The  revolutionary  temper  of  early  nineteenth-century  literature  in 
England  has  nowhere  been  better  defined  than  in  Dr.  A.  E.  HAN 
COCK'S  The  French  Revolution  and  the  English  Poets,  New  York, 
1899. 

AMERICAN  HISTORY  SINCE   1800 
Book  III.  Chapter  III. 

Abundant  references  for  the  study  of  American  history  since  1800 
will  be  found  in  Channing  and  Hart's  Guide,  pp.  329  ff.  For  the 
first  twenty  years  of  the  century,  see  HENRY  ADAMS'S  History  of  the 
United  States,  New  York,  1889—91  ;  for  the  period  between  1850 
and  1863,  J.  F.  RHODES' s  History  of  the  United  States,  New  York, 
1893-99,  is  the  chief  authority. 

LITERATURE  IN  AMERICA  SINCE   1 800 

Book  III.  Chapter  IV. 

For  literature  in  America  since  1 800,  see  the  general  authorities. 

BOOK  IV.     LITERATURE   IN   THE  MIDDLE   STATES 
FROM  1798  TO   1857 

CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 
Book  IV.  Chapter  I. 

BROCKDEN  BROWN'S  novels  have  been  published  at  Philadelphia, 
6  vols.,  1857,  and  in  a  later  and  more  sumptuous  edition,  6  vols., 
Philadelphia,  1887,  limited  to  500  copies.  Notable  biographies  of 
Brown  are  WILLIAM  DUNLAP'S  Life,  2  vols.,  Philadelphia,  1815,  and 
WILLIAM  H.  PRESCOTT'S  in  Sparks's  Library  of  American  Biography, 
Vol.  I.  pp.  119-180,  or  in  PRESCOTT'S  Biographical  and  Critical 
Miscellanies,  New  York,  1845. 

WASHINGTON   IRVING 
Book  IV.  Chapter  II. 

IRVING' s  works  are  published,  in  various  editions,  by  the  Putnams 
of  New  York.  Standard  biographies  are  the  Life  and  Letters  of  Wash- 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       543 

ington  Irvingy  by  his  nephew,  Pierre  M.  Irving,  4  vols.,  New  York, 
1862-64,  and  Mr.  CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER'S  Washington 
Boston,  1 88 1,  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series. 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER 
Book  IV.  Chapter  III. 

Editions  of  COOPER'S  novels  abound;  his  other  works  are  not  in 
print.  The  best  life  of  Cooper  is  that  by  Prof.  T.  R.  Lounsbury, 
Boston,  1883,  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series.  It  has  a  con 
siderable  bibliography.  An  excellent  monograph  on  Cooper,  by 
W.  B.  S.  Clymer,  is  about  to  be  published  in  the  Beacon  Biography 
series  at  Boston. 

WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT 
Book  IV.  Chapter  IV. 

Of  BRYANT'S  works  the  standard  edition  is  that  of  PARKE  GODWIN: 
Poetical  Works t  2  vols.,  New  York,  1883  ;  Prose  Writings y  2  vols., 
New  York,  1884.  The  best  life  of  Bryant  is  PARKE  GODWIN'S,  in 
two  volumes,  New  York,  1883. 

Griswold's  collections  and  Duyckinck's  Cyclopaedia  have  already 
been  referred  to  in  the  list  of  general  references.  Drake  and  Halleck 
are  generously  represented  in  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  Library  and 
in  the  collections  of  Griswold. 

EDGAR    ALLAN    POE 
Book  IV.  Chapter  V. 

Stedman  and  Woodberry's  edition  of  Poe,  in  10  vols.,  Chicago, 
1 894-95,  is  admirable.  The  best  biography  of  Poe  is  Professor  Wood- 
berry's,  Boston,  1885,  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series.  For 
Poe  bibliography,  see  Stedman  and  Woodberry's  tenth  volume,  pp. 
267-281. 

THE  KNICKERBOCKER  SCHOOL 

Book  IV.  Chapter  VI. 

On  American  periodical  publication  between  1815  and  1833,  see 
Dr.  W.  B.  Cairns  :  On  the  Development  of  American  Literature 


544       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

from  1815  to  1833,  with  Special  Reference  to  Periodicals,  Madison, 
Wisconsin,  1898. 

For  the  Knickerbocker  writers  in  general,  one  should  glance,  if 
possible,  at  The  Knickerbocker  Gallery :  a  Testimonial  to  the  Editor 
of  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine  from  its  Contributors.  .  .  .  New 
York:  Samuel  Hueston,  MDCCCLV. 

On  WILLIS,  Professor  Beers  writes :  "  Of  the  various  collective 
editions  of  his  [Willis's]  verse,  published  since  1 844,  ...  the  final 

and  most  complete  is  ...   the  Clark  and  Mavnard  edition 
Willis  * 

of  1868.      No  really  complete  edition  of  Willis's  writings 

has  ever  been  printed.  The  first  collective  edition  which  laid  claim 
to  being  complete  was  entitled  The  Complete  Works  of  N.  P.  Willis, 
I  vol.,  895  pp.,  New  York,  J.  S.  Redfield,  1846.  The  thirteen 
volumes  in  uniform  style,  issued  by  Charles  Scribner  from  1 849  to 
1859,  f°rm  as  nearty  a  complete  edition  of  Willis's  prose  as  is  ever 
likely  to  be  made."  (Beers's  Willis,  p.  353.)  A  volume  of  selec 
tions  from  Willis's  prose  writings  appeared  at  New  York  in  1885, 
under  the  editorship  of  Prof.  H.  A.  Beers.  The  best  biography  of 
Willis  is  that  by  Professor  Beers,  Boston,  1885,  in  the  American 
Men  of  Letters  series. 

Mrs.  Kirkland's  books,  originally  published  by  Francis,  of  New 
York  and  Boston,  seem  to  be  no  longer  in  print ;  they  are  chiefly 
A  New  Home  :  Who  '//  Follow  ?  1839;  Forest  Life,  1 842  ;  Western 
Clearings,  1846. 

Melville  Hermann  Melville's  best-known  stories  are:  Typee,  1846  ; 

Omoo,  1847;    Moby  Dick,  the  White  Whale,  1851. 

Standard  biographies  of  Bayard  Taylor  are  his   Life  and  Letters, 

i  edited  by  Marie  Hansen-Taylor  and  Horace  E.    Scudder, 

2  vols.,  Boston,   1884,  and  ALBERT  H.   SMYTH'S  Bayard 
Taylor,  Boston,  1 896,  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series. 

The  principal  writings  of  George  William  Curtis,  with  their  dates 
of  publication,  are:  Nile  Notes  of  a  Howadji,  1851;  Lotus  Eating: 
Curtis.  A  Summer  Book,  1852;  The  Potiphar  Papers,  1853; 
Prue  and  I,  1856;  Works;  Collected  and  Newly  Re 
vised  by  the  Author,  5  vols.,  1856;  Essays  from  the  Easy  Chair, 
three  series,  i892-'93-'94.  Mr.  Edward  Cary  has  written  a  life 
of  Curtis  for  the  American  Men  of  Letters  series,  Boston,  1 894. 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       545 


BOOK   V.     THE    RENAISSANCE  OF   NEW  ENGLAND 

SOME  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 
Book  V.  Chapter  I. 

The  outlines  of  New  England  history  in  the  colonial  period  are 
well  depicted  in  JOHN  FISKE'S  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,  Bos 
ton,  1889,  which  has  a  good  bibliography,  and  in  BROOKS  ADAMS'S 
The  Emancipation  of  Massachusetts,  Boston,  1887.  WINSOR'S  Amer 
ica,  Vol.  III.,  and  CHANNING  AND  HART'S  Guide,  §  109  ff.,  con 
tain  extensive  bibliographic  notes  on  New  England  colonial  history. 

Of  the  later  records  of  New  England  life  mentioned  in  the  text, 
Mrs.  STOWE'S  Oldtown  Folks,  originally  published  at  Boston  in  1869, 
where  also  her  Uncle  Tom' s  Cabin  appeared  in  two  volumes  in  1852, 
may  be  found  in  the  lately  published  Riverside  edition  of  her  works ; 
WHITTIER'S  Snow  Bound,  first  printed  at  Boston  in  1866,  is  promi 
nent  in  any  edition  of  his  poems;  LOWELL'S  Cambridge  Thirty  Tears 
Ago  (1854)  is  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Riverside  edition  of  his 
works,  and  his  A  Great  Public  Character  (1867)  is  in  the  second 
volume  of  the  same  edition  ;  Miss  LARCOM'S  chief  works,  with  the 
dates  of  publication,  are  :  Ships  in  the  Mist  and  Other  Stories,  1859  ; 
Poems,  1868;  Childhood  Songs,  1874;  An  Idyl  of  Work,  1875; 
Wild  Roses  of  Cape  Ann,  and  Other  Poems,  1881 ;  A  New  England 
Girlhood,  1889;  Miss  JEWETT'S  principal  works  up  to  1895  maybe 
found  in  Foley's  American  Authors,  pp.  158-9;  since  1895  she  has 
published  The  Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs,  1 896,  and  The  Queen's 
Twin,  and  Other  Stories,  1900  ;  Dr.  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE'S  New 
England  Boyhood,  first  published  at  Boston  in  1893,  may  be  found  in 
the  sixth  volume  of  his  lately  collected  works,  Boston,  1900  ;  Miss 
WILKINS  has  written  The  Adventures  of  Ann,  1886;  A  Humble  Ro 
mance  and  Other  Stories,  1887;  A  New  England  Nun  and  Other 
Stones,  1891  ;  Young  Lucre tia  and  Other  Stories,  1892;  The  Pot 
of  Gold  and  Other  Stories  [1892];  Jane  Field.  A  Novel,  1893  ; 
Giles  Cory,  Yeoman.  A  Play,  1893;  Pembroke:  A  Novel,  1894; 
Madelon.  A  Novel,  1896;  Jerome,  A  Poor  Man.  A  Novel,  1897  ; 
Miss  ALCOTT'S  Little  Women  was  published  at  Boston,  1868-69. 
On  the  literary  history  of  New  England,  see  W.  C.  LAWTON'S  New 
England  Poets,  New  York,  1898. 

35 


546       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

THE  NEW  ENGLAND  ORATORS 
Book  V.  Chapter  II. 

WEBSTER'S  Works,  in  6  vols.,  were  published  at  Boston  in  1851  ; 

for  select  speeches,  see  E.   P.   WHIPPLE'S    The  Great   Speeches  and 

Orations  of  Daniel   Webster,   with  an    Essay   on   Daniel 

Webster  as  a    Master  of  English    Style,    Boston,    1879. 

Good  biographies  of  Webster  are  GEORGE  TICKNOR  CURTIS' s  Life  of 

Daniel  Webster,    2   vols.,    New   York,    1870,   and   HENRY   CABOT 

LODGE'S  Daniel  Webster,   Boston,    1883. 

EDWARD  EVERETT'S  Orations  and  Speeches  on  Various  Occasions,  in 
4  vols.,  were  published  in  Boston,  1853—68.      On  the  renascent  in 
fluence  of  Everett's  teaching,  one  should  read  Emerson's 
"  Historic  Notes  of  Life  and  Letters  in  New  England,' ' 
Works,  Riverside  edition,  Vol.  X.  pp.  307  ff. 

RUFUS  CHOATE'S  Works,  with  Memoir  by  S.  G.  Brown, 
were  published  in  Boston,  1862. 

ROBERT  CHARLES  WINTHROP'S  Addresses  and  Speeches  on  Various 
Occasions  were  published,  in  4  vols.,  Boston,    1852-86. 
The  standard  life  of  Winthrop  is  the  Memoir  by  his  son, 
Robert  C.  Winthrop,  Jr.,  Boston,  1897. 

THE  NEW  ENGLAND  SCHOLARS  AND  HISTORIANS 
Book  V.  Chapter  III. 

For  an  article  on  "  Libraries  in  Boston  "  by  the  late  Justin  Winsor, 
see  his  Memorial  History  of  Boston,  Vol.  IV.  pp.  235  ff. 

PRINCE'S   Chronological  History  of  New  England  may  be 
conveniently  found  in  ARBER'S  English  Garner,  Vol.   II. 
pp.  287  ff.,  London,  1879. 

GEORGE  TICKNOR' s  History  of  Spanish  Literature  was   published 

in  three  volumes  at  New  York,  1 849  ;  his  Life  of  William  Hickling 

Ticknor        Presf0ff  appeared  at  Boston  in  1 864.      The  best  biography 

of  Ticknor  is   The  Life,  Letters,  and  Journals  of  George 

Ticknor,  by  Miss  Anna  Ticknor,  2  vols.,  Boston,  1876. 

SPARKS' s  historical  labours  may  be  suggested  by  these  chief  titles : 

Library  of  American  Biography,  first  series,  10  vols.,  Boston,  1834- 

Sparks.        38;    2d  series'  ^vols.,  Boston,   1844-48;    Washington's 

Writings,  12  vols.,  Boston,  1834-37;    Franklin's  Works, 

10  vols.,  Boston,   1836-40;   Correspondence  of  the  American   Revo- 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       $47 

lution,  4  vols.,  Boston,  1853;  The  Diplomatic  Correspondence  of 
the  American  Revolution,  12  vols.,  Boston,  1829-30.  For  further 
detail,  both  biographical  and  bibliographical,  see  HERBERT  B.  ADAMS'S 
The  Life  and  Writings  of  Jared  Sparks,  2  vols.,  Boston,  1893. 
Sparks's  MSS.  may  be  seen  in  the  reading  room  of  Harvard  College 
Library. 

PRESCOTT' s   History  of  the  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,   the 
Catholic,   3  vols. ,  appeared   at   Boston  in   1838;   his  History  of  the 
Conquest  of  Mexico,  etc.,  in  3  vols.,  at  New  York  in  1 843  ; 
his  Biographical  and  Critical  Miscellanies,  at  New  York  in 
1845  ;  the  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Peru,  etc.,  2  vols.,  New  York, 
1 847 ;   and  the  History  of  the  Reign  of  Philip  the  Second,  King  of 
Spain,  3  vols.,  Boston,  1855-58.      The  best  biography  of  Prescott  is 
GEORGE  TICKNOR'S  Life  of  William  Hickling  Prescott,  Boston,  1864. 

MOTLEY'S  Merry-  Mount ;  A  Romance  of  the  Massachusetts  Colony, 
2  vols.,  appeared  at  Boston  and  Cambridge,  in  1849  ;  The  Rise  of  the 
Dutch  Republic.     A  History,   3  vols.,  New  York,  1856; 
History   of  the    United   Netherlands,   etc.,   4  vols.,  New 
York,  1 86 1 -6  8;   The  Life  and  Death  of  John  of  Bar  neve  Id,  etc., 
2  vols.,  New  York,    1875.      Motley's   letters  have  been  edited  by 
George  William  Curtis,  in  2  vols.,  New  York,   1889.      See  also  the 
Memoir  by  Dr.  HOLMES,  Boston,   1879. 

GEORGE  BANCROFT'S  A  History  of  the  United  States,  etc.,  in  10 
vols.,   was    published  at  Boston   and  London,    1834-74; 
"The  Author's  Last  Revision,"  in  6  vols.,  was  published 
at  New  York,  1883-85. 

RICHARD  HILDRETH'S  The  History  of  the  United  States  of 

Hildirctn* 
America  was  published,  in  6  vols.,  at  New  York,  1851—56. 

PALFREY'S  History  of  New  England,  in  5  vols.,  Boston, 
1858-90.  Palfrey  died  in  1881  ;  the  fifth  volume  was 
edited  by  his  son,  F.  W.  Palfrey. 

FRANCIS  PARKMAN'S  works,  of  which  he  personally  retained  the 
copyright,  are  published,  in  various  editions,  by  Little,  Brown  &  Co., 
of  Boston.  For  accounts  of  Parkman's  life  and  estimates 
of  his  work,  see  JOHN  FISKE'S  A  Century  of  Science  and 
Other  Essays,  Boston,  1899;  and  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proceedings  for 
1893,  2d  series,  Vol.  VIII.  pp.  349-369.  The  authorized  biography 
of  Parkman,  by  C.  H.  Farnham,  has  just  been  published  in  Boston. 


548       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

UNITARIANISM 
Book  V.  Chapter  IV. 

On  Unitarianism  in  general,  see  the  article  by  Dr.  Andrew  P. 
Peabody  in  WINSOR'S  Memorial  History  of  Boston,  Vol.  VIII. 
Chap.  XI. 

CHANNING'S  works  may  be  found  in  a  convenient  one-volume  edition 
published  at  Boston  in  1886.  For  his  life,  see  WILLIAM  H.  CHAN 
NING'S  Memoirs  of  William  Ellery  Channing,  3  vols.,  Boston,  1848, 
also  published  in  one  volume  called  the  "  Century  Memorial  Edi 
tion,"  at  Boston  in  1880. 

The  biography  of  George  Ripley  has  been  written  by  O.  B.  Froth- 
ingham  for  the  series  of  American  Men  of  Letters,  Boston,  1882. 

TRANSCENDENTALISM 

Book  V.  Chapter  V. 

On  Transcendentalism  in  general  one  should  consult  O.  B.  FROTH- 
Transcen-  INGHAM'S  Transcendentalism  in  New  England :  A  History, 
dentalism.  New  York,  1876;  and,  if  possible,  The  Dial:  A  Maga 
zine  for  Literature,  Philosophy,  and  Religion,  4  vols.,  Boston, 
i 840-44. 

The  life  of  Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli  has  been  written  by  Col. 
•Margaret  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  for  the  series  of  American 
Men  of  Letters,  Boston,  1884. 

Of  several  books  on  Brook  Farm,  the  best  is  Mr.  LINDSAY  SWIFT'S 

Brook  Farm  ^ro°^  ^arm:   Ifs   Members,    Scholars,   and  Visitors,  New 
"York,  1900. 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 
Book  V.  Chapter  VI. 

The  standard  edition  of  Emerson's  works  is  the  Riverside,  in  12 
vols.  See  also  the  two  volumes  of  Carlyle-Emerson  letters,  edited 
by  Prof.  Charles  Eliot  Norton.  The  standard  biography  of  Emer 
son  is  the  Memoir,  in  two  volumes,  by  JAMES  ELLIOT  CABOT,  Boston, 
1 887.  HOLMES'S  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  Boston,  1884,  in  the  Ameri 
can  Men  of  Letters  series,  is  valuable.  GARNETT'S  Life  of  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  London,  1888,  in  the  Great  Writers  series,  has  a  considerable 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       549 

bibliography.  Important  critical  estimates  of  Emerson  are  Matthew 
Arnold's  Emerson,  in  his  Discourses  in  America ;  Lowell's  Emerson 
the  Lecturer,  in  his  Works,  Riverside  edition,  Vol.  I.  pp.  349  ff. ; 
and  John  Jay  Chapman's  Emerson,  Sixty  Tears  After,  originally 
published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for  January  and  February,  1897, 
and  since  reprinted  in  Emerson  and  Other  Essays,  New  York,  1898. 

THE  LESSER  MEN  OF  CONCORD 
Book  V.  Chapter  VII. 

Bronson  Alcott's  chief  works,  with  their  dates  of  publication,  are: 
Observations  on  the  Principles  and  Methods  of  Infant  Instruction, 
1830;  The  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of  Human  Culture,  1836;  Con 
versations  with  Children  on  the  Gospels,  2  vols.,  1836—37  ;  Tablets, 
1868;  Concord  Days,  1872;  Table  Talk,  1877;  New  Connecticut. 
An  Autobiographical  Poem,  1881;  Sonnets  and  Canzonets,  1882; 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  .  .  .  An  Estimate  of  his  Character  and  Genius, 
etc.,  1882.  There  is  a  Memoir  of  Alcott,  in  2  vols.,  by  Messrs. 
F.  B.  SANBORN  and  WILLIAM  T.  HARRIS,  Boston,  1893. 

The  standard  collection  of  Thoreau's  works  is  the  Riverside  edi 
tion,  in  10  vols.,  published  at  Boston.      With  Mr.  F.  B.  SANBORN'S 
Henry    David    Thoreau,    Boston,    1882,    and    EMERSON'S 
Thoreau,  in  the  Riverside  edition    of  his  works,  Vol.   X. 
pp.  421—452,  compare  LOWELL'S  Thoreau,  in  his  Works,  Riverside 
edition,  Vol.  I.  pp.  361  ff.      See  also  STEVENSON'S  essay  on  Thoreau, 
in  his  Familiar  Studies  in   Men  and  Books  (Works,  Thistle  edition, 
Vol.  XIV.   pp.    116-149).      Mr.   H.   S.  SALT'S  Life  of  Thoreau, 
London,    1896,   contains  a  bibliography. 

Theodore  Parker's  collected  works,  in  14  vols.,  were  published  at 
London,  1863-65;  his  Speeches,  Addresses,  and  Occasional  Sermons 
were  published  in  2  vols.,  Boston,  1852.  For  the  life 
of  Parker,  see  JOHN  WEISS  :  Life  and  Correspondence  of 
Theodore  Parker,  2  vols.,  New  York,  1864,  and  O.  B.  FROTHINC- 
HAM'S  Theodore  Parker :  a  Biography,  Boston,  1874. 

THE  ANTISLAVERY  MOVEMENT 

Book  V.  Chapter  VIII. 

On  the  Abolition  movement  in  general,   see  WINSOR'S   Memorial 
History  of  Boston,  Vol.  III.  Chap.  VI.,  and  Col.  Thomas  Wentworth 


550       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

Higginson's  Contemporaries,  Boston,  1899  ;  for  bibliographic  notes  on 
the  subject,  consult  Channing  and  Hart's  Guide,  §  187  ff. 

Selections  from  Writings  and  Speeches   of  William   Lloyd  Garrison 
were  published  at  Boston,  in  1852.      The  best  biography  of 
Garrison  is  that  by  Wendell  Phillips   Garrison  and  Francis 
Jackson  Garrison,  4  vols.,  New  York,  1885-89. 

Charles  Sumner's  works,  in  15  vols.,  were  published  at  Boston 
in  1874-83.  The  most  complete  biography  is  EDWARD  L.  PIERCE'S 
Memoir  and  Letters  of  Charles  Sumner,  4  vols.,  Boston, 
1879-93;  a  shorter  book  is  MR.  MOORFIELD  STOREY'S 
Charles  Sumner,  Boston,  1900,  in  the  American  Statesmen  series. 
On  the  Sumner- Brooks  affair,  see  J.  F.  RHODES' s  History  of  the  United 
States,  Vol.  II.  Chap.  VII. 

The  standard  collections  of  Mrs.   Stowe's  writings   is    the   lately 
published    Riverside    edition    in    16    vols.      Mrs.  J.    T.    Fields    has 
written    The    Life   of  Harriet  Beecher   Stowe,    Boston, 
1897. 

JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 
Book  V.  Chapter  IX. 

The  standard  collection  of  Whittier's  writings  is  the  Riverside 
edition  in  7  vols.  The  best  biography  is  SAMUEL  T.  PICKARD'S 
Life  and  Letters  of  John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  2  vols.,  Boston,  1894. 
WILLIAM  J.  LINTON'S  Life  of  Whittier  (London,  1893,  in  the 
Great  Writers  series)  contains  a  bibliography.  For  a  more  extended 
expression  of  the  views  set  forth  in  this  chapter,  see  B.  WENDELL  : 
Stelligeri,  New  York,  1893,  pp.  149-201. 

THE  "ATLANTIC  MONTHLY" 

Book  V.  Chapter  X. 

One  gets  an  interesting  impression  of  the  general  temper  of  the 
early  -Atlantic  Monthly-  by  glancing  over  The  Atlantic  Index, 
1857-88,  published  at  Boston  in  1889. 

The  writings  of  James  T.  Fields  are  chiefly:   Poems,  1849;    Yes 
terdays  with  Authors,  1872;   Hawthorne,    1876;    Old  Acquaintance. 
Fields.          Barry   Cor™*11  ™<l  Some  of  bis  Friends,   1876;   In  and 
V**tf1>™  «itb   Charles  Dickens,    ,876;    Underbrush, 
1877;   Ballads  and  Other  Verses,  1881 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       551 
HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW 

Book  V.  Chapter  XI. 

The  standard  collection  of  Longfellow's  works  is  the  Riverside 
edition  in  1 1  vols.  Samuel  Longfellow's  Life,  etc.,  3  vols.,  Boston, 
1891,  includes  all  the  materials  in  the  Life  of  1886  and  in  the 
Final  Memorials  of  1887.  Eric  S.  Robertson's  Life  of  Henry 
Wadsworth  Longfellow,  London,  1887,  in  the  Great  Writers  series, 
has  a  bibliography. 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 
Book  V.  Chapter  XII. 

Lowell's  works  are  collected  in  the  Riverside  edition,  n  vols., 
Boston.  See  also  the  Last  Poems,  edited  by  Prof.  Charles  Eliot 
Norton.  Lowell's  Letters,  also  edited  by  Professor  Norton,  were 
published  in  2  vols.,  at  New  York,  1894.  For  the  facts  of 
Lowell's  life  see  the  memoir  by  A.  Lawrence  Lowell,  in  Mass. 
Hist.  Soc.  Proceedings,  zd  series,  Vol.  XI.  pp.  75  ff.,  and  Dr. 
Edward  Everett  Hale's  James  Russell  Lowell  and  bis  Friends,  Boston, 
1 899.  Mr.  Horace  E.  Scudder  is  preparing  a  biography  of  Lowell  for 
the  American  Men  of  Letters  series.  For  a  sketch  of  Lowell  as  a 
teacher,  see  B.  WENDELL:  Stelligeri,  pp.  205-217. 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 
Book  V.  Chapter  XIII. 

The  standard  collection  of  the  writings  of  Dr.  Holmes  is  the  River 
side  edition  in  1 3  vols. ;  the  best  biography  is  that  by  Mr.  John 
T.  Morse,  Jr.,  the  Life  and  Letters  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  2 
vols.,  Boston,  1896. 

NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 
Book  V.  Chapter  XIV. 

HAWTHORNE'S  works  are  collected  in  the  Riverside  edition,  12  vols., 
Boston.  Perhaps  the  most  notable  biographies  are  JULIAN  HAW 
THORNE'S  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  his  Wife,  2  vols.,  Boston,  1885, 
and  Mr.  HENRY  JAMES'S  Hawthorne,  London,  1879,  in  the  EnSlish 
Men  of  Letters  series. 


552       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

THE  DECLINE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 
Book  V.  Chapter  XV. 

E.  P.  WHIFFLE  published  :    Essays  and  Reviews,  2  vols.,  1848-49  ; 

Lectures   on    Subjects  connected  with    Literature   and   Life,    1 849  ; 

Character  and  Characteristic  Men,  I  866  ;    The  Literature 

of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth,  1869  ;  Success  and  Its  Con dit ions., 

1871  ;    American  Literature,  and  Other  Papers,  1887  ;    Outlooks  on 

Society,  Literature,  and  Politics,  1888. 

R.  H.  DANA  is  chiefly  known  for  his  Two    Tears  before  the  Mast, 
1840,  and  his    To   Cuba,   and  Back:   A  Vacation  Voyage, 

,859. 

The  writings  of  Bishop  Brooks  are  published  at  New  York,  by 
Messrs.  E.  P.  Dutton  &  Co.  Prof.  A.  V.  G.  ALLEN  is  said  to  be 
preparing  an  exhaustive  Life  and  Letters  of  Phillips  Brooks,  to  be 
published  probably  in  2  vols.  ;  meanwhile,  Mr.  M.  A.  DEW. 
HOWE'S  Phillips  Brooks,  Boston,  1899,  is  useful. 

The  Letters  and  Recollections  of  John  Murray  Forbes,  edited  by 
his  daughter,  Sarah  Forbes  Hughes,  were  published  in  2  vols.  at 
Boston,  1 899. 


BOOK  VI.     THE   REST    OF  THE   STORY 

NEW  YORK  SINCE   1857 
Book  VI.  Chapter  I. 

For  BAYARD  TAYLOR,  see  p.  544. 

For  a  list  of  the  writings  of  RICHARD  GRANT  WHITE  see  Foley's 
Rich'd  Grant  -^mer^can  Authors,  pp.  304—307  ;  for  the  publications  of 
m/and  ^r'  ^OLLAND>  ibid.,  pp.  127—129  ;  for  the  work  of  the 
Rev.  E.  P.  ROE,  ibid.,  pp.  241-242.  The  late  HENRY 
BUNNER  published  :  A  Woman  of  Honor,  1883  ;  Airs  from 
Arcady  and  Elsewhere y  1884;  The  Midge,  1886;  The  Story  of  a 
New  York  House,  1887;  Short  Sixes,  Stories  to  be  Read  while  the 
Candle  burns,  1891  ;  Zadoc  Pine  and  Other  Stories,  1891  ;  The 
Runaway  Browns,  1892;  Rowen.  "Second-Crop"  Songs,  1892; 
Made  in  France :  French  Tales  re-told  with  a  U.  S.  Twist,  1893  ; 
More  Short  Sixes,  1895. 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       553 
WALT    WHITMAN 

Book  VI.  Chapter  II. 

WHITMAN'S  Complete  Prose  Works,  Boston,  1898,  and  his  Leaves 
of  Grass,  Boston,  1898,  together  contain  most  of  his  work.  Of  the 
writings  about  Whitman  one  should  note  Whitman  :  A  Study ,  by 
John  Burroughs,  Boston,  1896,  which  forms  the  tenth  and  last  volume 
of  the  «« New  Riverside  edition"  of  Burroughs' s  works;  and  Mr. 
John  Jay  Chapman's  essay  (pp.  111—128)  in  Emerson  and  Other 
Essays,  New  York,  1898.  Much  of  the  other  writing  on  Whitman 
is  collected  in  a  volume  called  In  Re  Walt  Whitman,  edited  by 
Horace  L.  Traubel  and  others,  and  published  at  Philadelphia  in 
1893. 

LITERATURE  IN  THE  SOUTH 

Book  VI.  Chapter  III. 

PROF.  WILLIAM  P.  TRENT'S  William  Gilmore  Simms,  Boston,  1892, 
besides  being  an  excellent  biography  of  its  subject,  is  a  fairly  sufficient 
guide  to  the  literature  of  the  South.  Simms's  works,  in  10  vols.,  were 
published  at  New  York  in  1882;  his  Poems,  2  vols.,  at  New  York 
in  1853. 

PAUL  H.  HAYNE'S  Poems,  Complete,  etc.,  were  pablished  in  Bos 
ton,  1882.  See  SIDNEY  LANIER'S  Paul  H.  Hayne's  Poetry  in  his 
Music  and  Poetry,  New  York,  1898,  pp.  197-211. 

The  latest  collection  of  TIMROD'S  work,  a  handsome  "  Memorial 
Edition"  with  memoir  and  portrait,  was  published  at  Boston  in  1899. 

The  chief  writings  of  SIDNEY   LANIER  are  :  Poems,    1877;    The 
Science  of  English  Verse,  1880;   The  English   Novel  and 
the  Principle  of  Its  Development,  1883;   Poems,   edited  by 
his  wife,  1884  ;   Music  and  Poetry,  1898  ;   Retrospects  and  Prospects, 
1899  ;   Letters  [1866-1881],  1899. 

THE  WEST 
Book  VI.  Chapter  IV. 

For  a  note  on  Mrs.  KIRKLAND'S  writings,  see  p.  544. 

CHARLES  FARRAR  BROWNE   ("A.  Ward")   published:    Browne 
Artemus    Ward:  his    Book,     1862;  Artemus   Ward:  his  (A>  Wardt) 
Travels,  1865  ;  Artemus  Ward  in  London,  and  Other  Papers,  1867; 


554       LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

Complete  Works,  with  Memoir  by  E.  P.  Hingston,  London  [1869]  5 
Sandwiches,  1870.  The  last  two  appeared  after  his  death  (1867). 

DAVID  Ross  LOCKE'S  (Petroleum  V.  Nasby's)  writings  are  chiefly  : 
The  Nasby  Papers,  etc.,  1864  ;  Divers  Views,  Opinions,  and  Prophe- 
Locie  cies,  1 866  ;  Swingin*  round  the  Cirkle,  1867;  Ekkoes 

(Hasby).  jrom  Kentuctyy  !868;  Struggles,  Social,  Political,  and 
Financial,  1873  ;  The  Moral  History  of  America's  Life-Struggle, 
1874;  The  Morals  of  Abou  Ben  Adhem :  Eastern  Fruit  on  Western 
Dishes,  1875;  Inflation  at  the  Cross  Roads,  1875;  ^  Paper  City, 
1879;  Hannah  Jane,  1881;  Nasby  in  Exile  /  or  Six  Months  of 
Travel,  1882;  The  Demagogue.  A  Political  Novel,  1891. 


AUTHORITIES  AND  REFERENCES       555 


NOTE 

To  any  one  who  knows  the  admirable  books  of  Prof.  Moses  Coit 
Tyler,  the  obligation  under  which  he  has  placed  all  future  students  of 
literature  in  America  must  be  obvious.  So  far  as  his  work  has  pro 
ceeded,  it  leaves  little  to  be  done  by  others.  The  best  short  and 
popular  book  on  the  subject  is  Mr.  Pancoast's.  Stedman  and  Hutchin- 
son's  "Library  of  American  Literature"  is  an  excellent  anthology, 
supplemented  by  a  trustworthy  biographical  dictionary,  and  exhaustively 
indexed.  Mr.  Stedman's  "American  Anthology"  has  admirable 
biographic  notes. 

Among  those  who  have  been  helpful  in  the  preparation  of  this 
book,  it  seems  proper  to  mention  Messrs.  Philip  Jacob  Centner, 
Chester  Noyes  Greenough,  and  George  Stockton  Wills,  of  Harvard 
University.  Mr.  Greenough  has  rendered  great  assistance  in  the 
preparation  of  the  bibliographical  notes.  Particular  acknowledgment 
is  also  due  to  Col.  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  whose  constant 
interest  and  kindness  have  been  equalled  only  by  his  tolerance  of 
occasional  difference  of  opinion. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


A  BBOTT,  Jacob,  his  "  Rollo,"  237, 

3°2,  337- 

Abbott,  John  S.  C.,  378. 

Absolute  Truth,  devotion  to,  in  New 
England,  238,  240,  241,  244,  294, 
297,  299,  309,  446,  523,  524,  529. 

Abstract  Principles,  American  De 
votion  to,  63,  109-110,  115-116, 
523>  525-  Sge  Revolution,  in 
general ;  Right  and  Rights. 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  438. 

Adams,  Henry,  his  "  History  of  the 
United  States,"  117,  149. 

Adams,  John,  7,  76,  117,  120,  247- 
248,  260,  437. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  437. 

Adams,  Samuel,  77,  120,  247,  260. 

Addison,  Joseph,  40,  65,  66,  68,  69, 
95,  101,  136,  167,  248,  484,  524. 

Africans,  Native,  342,  482.  See 
Slavery. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  376,  438. 

Ainsworth,  Harrison,  211. 

Albany,  New  York,  451. 

Albemarle,  George  Monk,  Duke  of, 

19,  32- 
Alcott,  Amos  Bronson,  328-332 ;  302, 

3°3»  333.  337,  372- 
Alcott,    Louisa    May,    her    "Little 

Women,"  237,  337. 
Alertness  of    Mind,  as  a  national 

trait,  22,  TOO. 

Almanacs  in  America,  36,  79. 
America,  defined,  6.    See   History, 

Literature,  National  Traits,  United 

States. 
America,  Literary  History  of,  6,  9, 

10,  521-530. 
American   Academy    of    Arts    and 

Sciences,  261,  262. 


"  American  Brag,"  160,  445. 
American  Philosophical  Society,  79, 

93.  261. 

Ames,  Fisher,  120,  248. 
Anarchy,  478. 
Andover  Theological  Seminary,  192, 

282,  415  ;    Phillips  Academy,  224, 

348,  408. 

Andrew,  John  Albion,  438. 
Anne,  Queen,  59,  65,  66,  67,  68,  119, 

484,  524. 

Anniversary  Week  in  Boston,  420. 
Anthology  Club  in  Boston,  261,  291. 
Antiquity,  American  delight  in,  178, 

271,  432. 
Antislavery    Movement,     339-357 ; 

80,  131,  304,  305.  338,  369»  387- 

389,  401.     See  Reformers,  Whit- 
tier. 

Appleton,  Thomas  Gold,  438-439. 
Aristocracy,  tacit  in  New  England, 

71-73,  76,  235,  237,  242,  352,  356. 
Armada,  the  Invincible,  26. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  526,  528. 
Artistic  Conscience   of  Americans, 

177,    179,   217-218,   432-434,  477, 

517,  527,  529- 
Artistic  Expression  in  the  history  of 

peoples,  462. 
Artistic  Temperament,  427-428, 430, 

433.  471- 
Assimilation,  American  power  of,  28, 

70,  77,  523- 
"  Atlantic  Monthly,"  the,  370-377  J 

229,  378,  404,  410,  417,  436»  443~ 

444,  449,  453- 

Audubon,  John  James,  486. 
Augustine,  Saint,  16, 17, 89,  279,  298, 
Austen,  Jane,  193. 
Australia,  104,  143. 


56o 


INDEX 


T>  AGON,  Francis,  4,  22,  32,  37,  77. 

0  Baltimore,  205,  233, 267, 284, 481. 

Bancroft,  George,  271-272. 

Barlow,  Joel,  126-128;  123,  129,  165. 

Barnum,  P.  T.,  511. 

Bartlet,  Phebe,  87-88. 

Bartlett,  Sidney,  415. 

Bay  Psalm  .Book,  36-38. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  22,  25,  298. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  353. 

Beecher,  Lyman,  352-353. 

Beers,  Henry  Augustin,  his  Life  of 

Willis,  226. 

Bellows  Falls,  Vermont,  157. 
Bethlehem,  the  Moravians  of,  72. 
Bible,  the  English,  5,  8,  16,  22,  30, 

38,  46,  47.70,82,  190,  246,  248,  283, 

292,  298,  373,  521. 
Bible,  Eliot's  Indian,  51. 
Bishoprics  proposed  in  the  American 

Colonies,  in. 
Blackstone's   "  Commentaries,"    76, 

118. 

Blenheim,  Battle  of,  60,  61. 
"Bohemia"  in  America,   206,  229, 

516-517- 

Boone,  Daniel,  500. 
Boston,  26,  47,  55,  71,  76,  78,  92,  94, 

95,  105,  120,  121, 122, 124,  193,  194, 

201,    204,     223-225,    229,     233-234, 

236,  237,  240-248,  253,  261-262, 
264-266,  271,  275,  281,  287,  291, 
292, 295,  297,  311,  317,  329,  351, 

352»  353.  357,  360,  365.  370,  374, 
37  5,  376,  389,  393,  402,  407-410, 
412,  415,  416,  418,  420,  423,  426, 
436-440,  450,  451,  453-454,  505. 

Boston  Athenasum,  261,  262,  291. 

Boston  Museum,  247. 

Boston  Public  Library,  265-266. 

Bowdoin  College,  354,  378-380,  425, 
426. 

Braddock's  Defeat,  73,  74. 

Bradford,  William,  26,  32,  50.  His 
"  History  of  Plymouth  Planta 
tion,"  31,  263. 

Bradstreet,  Anne,  36,  40,  78,  1 19. 

Brattle  Street  Church  in  Boston, 
253,  288,  442. 


British  Classics  published  in  Amer 

ica,  157. 
Brook  Farm,  305-309;  304,  324,  331, 

333,  426,  429,  455. 
Brooklyn,  New  York,  353,  465,  472, 

478-479. 
Brooks,  Phillips,  Bishop  of  Massa 

chusetts,  122,  287,  438,  439,  443. 
Brooks,  Preston,  his  assault  on  Sum- 

ner,  351,  483. 
Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  157-168  ; 

I09,  175,  181,  184,   185,  189,  190, 

192,  194,  203,  219,  228,  230,  269, 

280,  290,  335,  374,  432,  433,  449, 

488,  527. 

Browne,  Charles  Farrar,  511. 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  23. 
Browning,    Elizabeth    Barrett,    147, 

209,  526,  528. 
Browning,  Robert,  147,475-476,  526, 

528. 
Bryant,   William    Cullen,    192-203  ; 

204,  205,  206,  207,  219,  221,  228, 

229,  230,  244,  280,  288,  290,  338, 

360,   433,  449,  527;    his  Transla 

tions  from  the  Spanish,  391,  394. 
Bulwer-Lytton,  161,  228. 
Bunker  Hill,  Battle  of,  76,  247,  250. 

Monument,  250,  403. 
Bunner,  Henry  Cuyler,  461. 
Bunyan,  John,  20,  40. 
Burke,  Edmund,  65,  67,  68,  69,  76, 

77,  108,  141,  524. 
Burns,  Robert,  67,  68,  119,  123,  136, 

524- 
Burton's  "  Anatomy  of  Melancholy," 

23,  54,  400. 
Butler,  Samuel,  126,400.   His  "Hu- 

dibras,"  38,  40,  124,  125,  126. 
Byles,  Mather,  442. 
Byrd,  William,  484. 
Byron,  Lord,  145,  146,  174,  192,  196, 

526,  527. 


,   James   Elliot,  his   Life 
of  Emerson,  309-310,  431. 
Cairns,  W.   B.,  his  monograph  on 

American  Literature,  219. 
Calhoun,  John  Caldwell,  485. 


INDEX 


S6i 


Calvin,  14,  16,  89,  279. 

Calvinism,  summarized,  15,  **6r  in^ 
New  England,  28,  34-40,  74,  So, 
81,84-91,  103,  121,  122,  180,  224, 
238,  240,  241,  277,  280-283,  286, 
287,  353»  359>  372,  385,  4oo,  407, 
408,  409,  414,  418-423,  523,  528. 
See  Puritanism. 

Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  71,  381, 
393,  395,  396.  Church  of,  52,  288, 
407.  See  Harvard  College. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  132,  134,  196. 

Canada,   30,  62,  73,   104,  105,   142, 

143- 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  147,  206,  272,  296, 

313,  475-476,  526,  528. 

Centuries,  in  American  history,  6-7  ; 
in  general :  the  Seventeenth,  13- 
55,  T36,  522-523;  the  Eighteenth, 
59-136 ;  30,  357,  417, 423,  524-525  5 
the  Nineteenth,  139-154,  518,  525- 
530.  See  History,  Literature. 

"  Century  Magazine,"  the,  453,  454, 

459- 

Channing,  Edward  Tyrrell,  194,  262. 

Channing,  William  Ellery,  284-286  ; 
122,  267,  277,  279,  280,  291,  292, 
293,  294,  296,  303,  338,  341,  379, 
437,  442. 

Character,  the  Development  of 
American  National,  /,  9,  33,  34, 
74-76,  80,  102-103,  109-111,136, 
160,  162,  169,  186,  202,  238-245, 

355,  523-530. 
Characteristics    of    New    England, 

233-245. 
Characters,  in  American  fiction,  165, 

184,  185-186,  1 88,  189,  354,  488. 
Charles  I.,  13,  26,  79,  107. 
Charles  II.,  13,  19,  90. 
Charleston,  South  Carolina,  486,  487, 

488,  491,  492. 
"  Charlotte  Temple,"  Mrs.  Rawson's, 

219. 

Charters  of  Massachusetts,  45. 
Chatham,  William  Pitt,  Earl  of,  77, 

108, 

Chaucer,  4,  5. 
Chicago,  73,  233,  451,  505-507. 


Choate,  Rufus,  106,  257,  371,  439, 
485- 

Church  of  England,  see  Episcopal. 

Church  and  State  in  America,  70, 83. 
See  Theocracy. 

Churchill,  Charles,  119. 

Cincinnati,  353. 

Civil  War,  the  American,  73,  104, 
105,  151-152,  256,  351,  357,  365- 
366,  368,  378,  398,  440,  450,  459, 
461,  463,  466,  474,  478,  480,  481, 
484,  487,  488,  489-499'  5°3,  511, 

Civil  Wars  of  England,  17,  18,  23, 
29,  104,  107,  112,  346,  522. 

Clark,  Lewis  Gaylord,  208,  220-223, 
226. 

Clarke,  James  Freeman,  438. 

Class  of  1829  at  Harvard,  408,  414. 

Classical  Temper  in  American  Writ 
ings,  201,  315-316,  431,  432. 

Classics,  study  and  influence  of,  in 
America,  247,  253-254,  257,  258- 
259,  260,  274,  292,  298,  325,  373, 

483- 

Clay,  Henry,  485,  486. 

Clemens,  Samuel  Langhorne,  513. 

Clergy  of  New  England,  71,  72,  75, 
83,  235,  238-240,  246,  247,  258,  260, 
281,  287,  292,  308,  311,  318,  325, 
347,  439,  441-442,  465-  See  Or 
thodoxy,  Puritanism,  Theocracy, 
LTnitarianism. 

Cleveland,  Ohio,  511,  512. 

Coats  of  Arms,  in  New  England,  71, 

243- 

Coleman,  Benjamin,  442. 
Coleridge,   Samuel   Taylor,   67,   69, 

145,  146,  193,  296,  526,  527. 
Columbia  College,  79,  461,  480. 
Commerce   of   New   England,   244, 

425,  440. 
Common-sense  in  American  Men  of 

Letters,  98-101,  324-325,  328,  471, 

Commonwealth,  the  English,  13,  20, 
21,  29,  42,  483,  523.  See  Cromwell. 

Concord,  Massachusetts,  328-338; 
76,  315,  317,  403.  426,  429- 


562 


INDEX 


Congregations  in  New  England, 
239-240,  246. 

Connecticut,  78,  83,  no,  123,  126, 
329>  332,  352,  353.  4Q7-  See  Hart 
ford,  New  Haven. 

Conservatism  in  America,  527 ;  in 
New  England,  243,  259,  302,  326- 
327,  343-346,  35°'  356,  37i,  442; 
in  the  South,  482-483,  487;  in 
England,  59,  60,  62,  63,  64,  68, 
139-141. 

Constitution,  the  English,  16,  18, 19, 
33,  140-141.  See  Reform  Bill. 

Constitution  of  the  United  States,  6, 
29,  76>  93,  Il8>  J49>  345>  346,  359, 
366,  502. 

Cooke,  John  Esten,  486,  487. 

Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  181-191  ; 
176,  194,  203,  207,  228,  230,  280, 
290,  33S,  449>  462,  488,  489,  S°°> 
527- 

Cooperstown,  New  York,  181,  182, 

187. 
Copley,  John  Singleton,  71,  76,  240- 

242. 

"  Copperheads,"  459,  512. 
Cotton,  John,  26,  32, 42, 44,  235,  288, 

311.     John,  the  younger,  240. 
Cowper,  William,  67,  201,  228,  508. 
Crevecceur,  114,  115. 
Criticism,  Literary,  in  America,  187, 

208-211,  400-401,  438,  458,  507. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  13,  14,  17,  18,  19, 

21,  24,  29,  31,  53,  107,  523. 
Cross,  Dr.  Arthur  Lyons,  in  n. 
"  Culture"  in  New  England,  373. 
Curtis,   George   William,   222,  229, 

309,  455- 
Custom,  see  Law,  Rights. 


TTJANA,   Charles   Anderson,   305, 

308,  455- 

Dana,  Richard  Henry,  194. 
Dana,  Richard  Henry,  Jr.,  438. 
Dartmouth   College,  248,   257,   264, 

408. 

"Darwin,  Charles,  148. 
Davies,  Sir  John,  41. 


"  Decadence,"  in  contemporary  liter 
ature,  189,  217,  477-479- 

Declaration  of  Independence,  76,  93, 
106,  113,  115,  275,437,  485. 

Decline  of  New  England,  436-446, 

453- 
Defoe,  Daniel,  20,  65,  66,  112.     His 

"  Robinson  Crusoe,"  387. 
Democracy  in  America,  108,  203,  235, 

236,  359.  362,  481,  509.  527-530; 

compared  with  European,  467-471, 

529;  in  England,    148,    525,    527; 

imperial,    525.     See    Aristocracy, 

Equality,  Excellence,  Liberty. 
Density  of  population,  in   its  effect 

on  character  and  history,  17,  33, 

89,  152,  278,  281,  306,  384, 463,  529. 

See  Inexperience,  Retardation. 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  161,  193,  376. 
Derby,  George  Horatio,  510. 
Description,    in    American    fiction, 

164-166,  175,  186,  189,  354,  488. 
"  Dial,"  the,  300-305  ;  298,308,  318, 

33°.  342,  347,  370,  373>  436,  443, 

453- 

"  Dial,"  the  Chicago,  507. 
Dialect  in  American  Writings,  401, 

402,  477,  511-513. 
Dialogue,  as  a  literary  form,  483-484. 
Dicey,  A.  V.,  1 8  n. 
Dickens,  Charles,  147,  171,  176,  206, 

502,  526,  528. 

Diplomacy,  American  Men  of  Let 
ters  in.  See  Everett,  Irving, 

Lowell,  Motley,  Taylor,  Willis. 
Disraeli,  Benjamin,  228. 
Dissenters,  English,  224,  288.     See 

Methodism. 
Distinction,  Personal,  of  American 

Men  of  Letters,  201-202,  203,  229, 

289»  3'S.  338,  5°9- 

Disunion  of  National  Temper,  of 
America  and  England,  9,  105-116, 
150,  153,  175,  182,  185,  187,  322- 
323,  525,  526;  within  America,  151, 
351,484,  505- 

Divinity  School  at  Cambridge,  314. 

Dobson,  Austin,  415. 

"  Dooley,  Mr.,"  173. 


INDEX 


Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  195-196. 
Drama,  the,  214;  in  America,  157- 

158,204,247,301,355,  5i7-5l8J  in 
England,  20,  23,  24,  298,  302. 
Dryden,  John,  20,  21,  24,  25,  37,  38, 
40,  42,  54,  55.  65,  68.  69,  136,  484, 

523- 

Dudley,  Joseph,  41,  357. 

Dudley,  Thomas,  26,  32,  40. 

Dunlap,  William,  158.  His  Life  of 
Brockden  Brown,  158-160. 

Dunster,  Henry,  President  of  Har 
vard  College,  43,  240. 

Duyckinck,  Evert  Augustus,  his 
"  Cyclopedia  of  American  Litera 
ture,"  195,  208,  462. 

Dwight,  John  Sullivan,  305,  309, 438. 

Dwight,  Timothy,  120-123,  124,  129, 
181,  352. 


PAST  RIVER,  the,  465,  472,  478. 

Eaton,  Theophilus,  50,  51. 
Eccentricity  in  Literature,  466,  475- 

477- 

Education,  Development  of,  in 
America,  235,  2^3-254,  258,  260- 
261,  262,  264-266,  271,  306,  329- 
330,  394-395-  See  Classics,  Har 
vard,  Law,  Modern  Languages, 
Smith  Professorship,  Theology, 
Yale,  etc. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  83-91 ;  78,  80, 
92,  93,  95>  99,  102,  I03>  I2O»  J36, 
180,  240,  280,  285,  419,  422. 

Election,  the  doctrine  of,  1 5,  48,  49, 
52,  84,  87-89,  100,  238,  239,  240, 
279.  See  Calvinism. 

Eliot,  George,  147, 154,  176,  526,  528. 

Eliot,  John,  32,  37,  51. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  13,  21,  25,  26,  31, 
32»53>  55,59,60,65,  77,  126. 

Elizabethan  England,  see  National 
Traits. 

Ellsler,  Fanny,  209-210,  301. 

Emancipation  Proclamation,  356. 

Embargo,  Jefferson's,  193,  244,  429. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  311-327; 
- — MJ,  .aofr»253-255,  260,  298,  300, 


301,  302,  303,  304,  306,  308,  310, 
32»,  332,  335,  336,  337,  338,  37 1, 
372,  373,  376,  379,  395,  412,  425, 
426,  430,  432,  437,  438,  445,  469, 
485,  489,  528. 

Empire,  the  course  of,  8-9,  30,  62, 
106,  108,  142-144,  149-153,  525. 

England,  see  History,  Law,  Litera 
ture,  National  Traits. 

Enthusiasm,  see  National  Traits. 

Episcopal  Church,  the  Protestant,  of 
the  United  States,  79,  no,  in, 
121,  184,  347,  442. 

Equality,  the  Ideal  of,  362,  468-469, 
474,  529-  See  Democracy,  Excel 
lence,  Right  and  Rights. 

Essays,  English,  67,  118,  174;  in 
America,  120,  124,  170,  317,  417, 
460,  498. 

Essex,  Earl  of,  18,  32. 

"Evening  Post,"  the  New  York, 
193,  196,  198,  230,  449. 

Everett,  Edward,  253-257;  170,  260, 
264,  271,  280,  291,  311,  371,  437, 

439.  485- 
Evolution,  philosophy   of,    16,    293, 

339- 
Excellence,  the  Ideal   of,  467-469, 

471,  528,  530.     See  Democracy. 
Expansion  of  the  United  States,  149. 
Extracts  from    American   writings : 

Barlow,  127-128 ;  Bay  Psalm  Book, 

37-38  ;   Anne   Bradstreet,  40-41 ; 

Brockden  Brown,  162, 164  ;  Bryant, 

197-200;  Channing,  277-278,  284- 

285,    341;    W.    G.    Clark,    220; 

Crevecceur,  114-115;  Drake,  196; 

Dunlap,    158;   Dwight,    120-123; 

Edwards,  84-89;    Emerson,    253- 

254,  29S,  3I2-3T4>  3l6»  32°-324; 
Everett,  256-257;  Fields,  375; 
Franklin,  94-99, 101-102 ;  Freneau, 
131-133;  Halleck,  196;  Hartford 
Wits,  128-129;  P.  H.  Hayne,  492; 
Holland,  460  ;  Holmes,  90-91,  222- 
223,  4"-4i5,  419-422,  438»  444J 
Hopkinson,  113-114;  Irving,  172, 
175-176;  Lanier,  496-498;  Long 
fellow,  387-389,  391-392  ?  Lowell, 


564 


INDEX 


186,  199,  339-340,  399,  402-403, 
405;  'C.  Mather,  44,  49,  51-52  ; 
Otis,  108-109;  Poe,  209-210,  212- 
216;  Stedman,  385;  B.  Taylor,  457  ; 
Thoreau,  335-336;  F-  O.  Tick- 
nor,  489-498;  Timrod,  493~494J 
Trumbull,  124-126;  Webster,  250- 
252 ;  Whittier,  361-369 ;  Whitman, 
470-475;  Wigglesworth,  39-40; 
Willis,  223,  227;  Woolman,  80- 
81. 


pAMILY  Discipline  in  New  Eng 
land,  237. 

Faneuil  Hall  in  Boston,  255,  349. 

Fashion  in  Boston,  225,  288. 

"Federalist,"  the,  118,  120,  135,  136. 

Felton,  Cornelius  Conway,  438,  439. 

Fiction,  in  the  Evolution  of  Litera 
ture,  5,  167,  190;  in  English  Liter 
ature,  66,  68,  90,  147-148,  160-161, 
176,  430-431'  477,  526~S27 ;  in 
America,  163-168,  179,  181-192, 
271,  272,  354-356,  417,  426,  460- 
461,  486,  487,  488-489,  498.  See 
Short  Stories. 

Fielding,  Henry,  66,  68,  160,  171. 

Fields,  James  Thomas,  375-377; 
222,  438,  443-444- 

Fine  Arts,  the,  5,  296,  385,  416,  476, 
510. 

First  church  of  Boston,  42,  288,  311. 

Fontenoy,  Battle  of,  60,  61. 

Forbes,  John  Murray,  438,  439. 

Form,  Sense  of,  in  American  Writers, 
166-167.  See  Artistic  Conscience. 

Fourier,  306-308. 

Foxe,  John,  26. 

France,  as  enemy  of  England,  29-31, 
60-63,  73-74,  272;  as  friend  of 
America,  63,  115,150.  See  Revo 
lution,  Revolutionary  Spirit. 

"Frankenstein,"  Mrs.  Shelley's,  161, 
193- 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  92-103;  79,  82, 
120,  136,  173,  233,  245,  268,  437, 
509 ;  his  Letter  to  a  London  news- 
173,  508. 


"Eraser's  Magazine,"  187. 
Freeman,  James,  121-122,  281. 
"  Freeman's  Oath,"  36. 
French  and  Indian  Wars,  73,  274. 
Freneau,  Philip,  130-135,  136. 
Fruitlands,  Community  at,  331,  333. 
Fuller,    Sarah    Margaret,    300-301 ; 

208,    229,  302,   304-306,  308,  331, 

371,  386,  455- 
Fuller,  Thomas,  20,  23,  38,  54. 


QARRISON,  William  Lloyd,  342- 
343>348,  360. 

Gayarre,  Charles  fitienne,  486. 

Genealogy,  American  delight  in, 
264. 

General  Principles,  American  de 
votion  to,  see  Abstract  Principles. 

George  I.,  59- 

George  II.,  54,  59>  66,  68,  74,  75,  79' 

524- 
George  III.,  59,  60,62, 105,  116,  126, 

131,  139- 

George  IV.,  139. 
Georgia,  74,  481,  483,  484,  486,  489, 

491,  492,  495. 
German   Learning,  Influence   of,  in 

New  England,  253,  264,   267,  268, 

271,  272,  275,  295-296. 
Gibbon,  Edward,  67,  268,  275-276. 
"Godey's  Lady's  Book,"  204,   207, 

219. 

Godkin,  Edwin  Lawrence,  439,  454. 
Godwin,  Parke,  194. 
Godwin,  William,  67,   68,    160-162, 

163,  184,228,488. 
Goethe,  Taylor's  translation  of,  456, 

458. 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  66,  160,  171,  173, 

174,  184,  228,  276. 
Gray,  Thomas,  66,  200. 
Great  Awakening,  the,  74-76,  no. 

See  Whitefield. 
Greeley,  Horace,  454~455  5  229»  300, 

308. 

Greenfield,  Connecticut,  121,  123. 
Griswold,  Rufus   Wilmot,  195,  199, 

208,  455,  462. 


INDEX 


565 


fJAKLUYT'S  "Voyages,"  20,22, 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  237. 

Half  Way  Covenant    in   the    New 

England  Churches,  86. 
Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  195,  196-197, 

208,  221. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  117,  118,  120. 
"  Harper's  Magazine,"  453,  454. 
"  Harper's  Weekly,"  229,  449,  453, 

454- 
Hartford,  Connecticut,   52,  84,  123, 

124,  127,  360. 
Hartford  Wits,   the,   119-130,   135, 

136,  157- 

Harvard  College,  26,  42-43,  44,  46, 
47,  48,  50,  75,  78,  79,  83,  93,  94, 
119,  120,  122,  129,  224,  235,  240, 
253»  255»  26°,  26l>  262,  264-265, 
267,  269,  271,  272,  273,  281,  288, 
311,  332>  346,  34S»  3So»  379-38o» 
381,  393-  394,  395.  396,  398,  404, 
407,  408,  412-415,  443-445'  48o. 

Haverhill,  Massachusetts,  358,  360. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel. ^2^4.^5^ dig. 
1 68,  176,  206,  240,  30671^328, 

376,  377,  379,  438»  445,  47i,  477, 
489,  516,  528. 

Hayne,  Paul  Hamilton,  486,  490- 
492,  499. 

Hayne,  Robert  Young,  252,  485,  490. 

Henry,  Patrick,  112,  120. 

Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Lord,  19,  32. 

Herndon's  Life  of  Lincoln,  503. 

Hildreth,  Richard,  272. 

Historical  Continuity,  18,  29. 

Historical  literature  in  America,  31, 
36,  42,  43,  78,  81,  119,  136,  171- 
173,  178-179,  245,  263-276,  338, 
378,  486,  528;  in  England,  37, 

"9,  275- 

History,  American,  of  the  Seven 
teenth  Century,  26-34;  42,  55,  70, 
77,  357,  523 ;  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  70-77,  524;  of  the  Nine 
teenth  Century,  149-153,  357,  525- 
526 ;  in  general,  530. 

History,  English,  of  the  Seventeenth 
Century,  13-19,  20,  29,  55,  357, 


522;  of   the  Eighteenth  Century, 

59-64,    524;    of    the    Nineteenth 

Century,  139-144,  525. 
Hoar,  Ebenezer  Rockwood,  438. 
Hoffman,  Charles  Fenno,  208,  220. 
Holland,  Josiah  Gilbert,  459-461. 
Hollis   Professorship     at    Harvard 

College,  281. 
Hollis   Street    Church  in    Boston, 

442. 

Holmes,  Abiel,  288,  407. 
Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  407-424; 

"  65,    206,    221,    222,    229,    239,   376, 

377,  425,  426,  430,  443,  489,  508- 
509,  511,  528;  his  "Autocrat," 
241,  444;  his  "  Mortal  Antipathy," 
222  ;  his  memoir  of  Motley,  437- 
438;  his  "One  Hoss  Shay,"  90- 
91. 

"  Home  Journal,"  the,  226. 

Hooker,  Richard,  4,  22,  37. 

Hooker,  Thomas,  26,  84. 

Hopkinson,  Francis,  112-115,  J75» 
his  "  Battle  of  the  Keys,"  508. 

"  Hudibras,"  see  Butler. 

Human  Nature,  opposing  views 
concerning ;  see  Calvinism,  Revo 
lutionary  Spirit,  Unitarianism. 

Humanism  in  New  England,  406. 

Humanity  of  Classical  Literature, 
315-316.  See  Popularity. 

Hume,  David,  66,  67. 

Humor,   American,    101,   173,     179, 

5°7-5r3»  5*5.  5*8. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  174,  224,  228. 

Hunt,  William  Morris,  438. 

Hutchinson,  Thomas,  77,  no,  120, 
260 ;  his  "  History  of  Massachu 
setts,"  82,  263. 


TDEALISM  in  America,  293-294, 
304,  310,  319-323,  371-372,  417, 
432,  524,  525,  529.  See  Mystery, 
Puritanism. 

Ideals,  American  devotion  to  Ab 
stract,  see  Abstract  Principles. 

Ideals,  the  National,  of  England  and 
America,  8,  14,  18,  28,  46,  70,  82, 


566 


INDEX 


106,  190,  246,  521-530.  See  Bible, 
Democracy,  Law,  Right  and 
Rights,  Union. 

Imitativeness  in  American  Writings, 
38,  41,  54,  119,  130,  135,  162,  167, 
170,  173,  181,  184,  196,  224,  228, 
247,  253,  258-259,  262,  272,  372, 
386-387,  391,  480-481,  483,  489, 
491.  See  Style. 

Independence,  Declaration  of,  see 
Declaration. 

India,  the  Empire  of,  62,  142,  143. 

Indians,  American,  31,  32,  73,  186, 

274,  505-  I 

Individualism,  Growth  of,  in  Nevfr 
England,  327,  330,  442-444-  Su 
Alcott,  Emerson,  Thoreau,  Trafp- 
cendentalism,  Unitarianism. 

Inexperience,  the  National  of  Amer 
ica,  34,  37,  55' 77,  "6,  130,  136, 
153,  218,  279,  287,  327,  359,  362, 
384-385,  424,  446,  529.  See  Den 
sity,  Retardation. 

Innate  ideas,  294,  300,  304. 

Instrument  of  Government,  the,i8, 28. 

Insularity  of  Modern  England,  62, 
64,  69,  139-140.  See  John  Bull. 

Irving,  Washington,  169-1^0  ;  168, 
181,  184,  185,  189,  190,  191,  194, 
195,  201,  203,  221,  228,  229,  230, 
271,  276,  280,  290,  328,  432,  433, 
449,  462,  477,  509,  511,  516,  527. 

Isabella  II.,  Queen,  169. 


JAMES  I.,  13. 
James  II.,  13,  59,  90. 
James,  Henry,  438. 
Jamestown,  Virginia,  28. 
Jay,  John,  117,  120. 
Jefferson,    Thomas,    106,    117,    120, 

H9>  I93»  485- 
Jewett,  Sarah  Orne,  237. 
"John  Bull,"  64,  112,  140,  175,  403, 

446,  524. 

Johns  Hopkins  University,  495,  496. 
Johnson,  Samuel,  65,  66,  67,  68,  69, 

112,  117,  136,  253,  524.     Boswell's 

Life  of,  67,  157. 


Jonson,  Ben,  20,  25. 
Journalism  in   America,  see  News 
papers. 


j^EATS,  John,  134,  145,  193,  195, 

526. 

Kennedy,  John  Pendleton,  486. 
King's     Chapel,     in     Boston,    105, 

121-122,  178,  288;  its  "Liturgy," 

281. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  147,  516. 
Kirkland,    Caroline     Matilda,    208, 

229,  5OI-5°3- 

"  Knickerbocker  Gallery,"  237,  466. 
"  Knickerbocker     Magazine,"     374, 

386,  459,  5J4- 

"Knickerbocker  School,"  the,  219- 
230;  280,  309,  338,  449,   465,  487, 


TAFAYETTE,  115-116. 

Lamb,  Charles,  67,  69. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  67,  69, 
197. 

Language  and  Nationality,  3,  8,  18, 
28,  82,  1 06,  521.  See  Ideals. 

Language,  the  English,  3,  8. 

Lanier,  Sidney,  481,  486,  491,  495- 
499. 

Larcom,  Lucy,  237. 

Law,  the  English  or  Common,  8,  14, 
17,  18,  19,  30,  46,  61,  62,  63,  64,  70, 
74,  82,  106,  108,  109,  116,  142-144, 
150,  190,  246,  274,  292,  298,  325, 

340,  373,467,  52I-522>  524,  530- 
Law,  the  Profession  of,  in  America, 
236,  246,  248-249,  251,  258,  260, 
274,  348,  350,  378,  408,  415,  441; 
American  Men  of  Letters  as  Stu 
dents  of,  169,  194,  264,  380,  393, 
408,  458,  485,  486,  487,  488,  491, 

495- 
Lectures  in  America,  247,  313,  314, 

3*5'  3!7,  325,  33°,  456,  459,  S11- 
Lee,  Robert  Edward,  151. 
Leland,  Charles  Godfre}r,  222. 
Lewis,  "Monk,"  67,  68,  160,  163. 


INDEX 


Liberalism,  in  New  England,  42,  43, 
46,  119,  122,  224,  442.  See  Tran 
scendentalism,  Unitarianism. 

Liberty,  the  Ideal  of,  273,  443,  467, 

530- 

"  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity," 
467-468. 

Lieber,  Francis,  486. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  151,474,  503-504. 

Literature  defined,  1-3  ;  evolution 
of,  5;  motives  of,  191,  228,  309; 
permanent,  315;  study  and  influ 
ence  of,  in  America.  See  Classics, 
Modern  Languages. 

Literature  in  America,  9-10,  405, 
479 ;  of  the  Seventeenth  Century, 
35-435  55.  "9.  !9°>  246,523;  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  78-82 ; 
117-136;  190,  246,  525  ;  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  154-518,  526- 

530- 

Literature,  Elizabethan,  see  English 
of  the  Seventeenth  Century. 

Literature,  English,  4-6 ;  of  the 
Seventeenth  Century,  20-25,  27, 
37.  55.  65»  69,  136, 146,  523  ;  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  65-69,  136, 
146,  173-174,  200-201,  415-416, 
524;  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
145-148,  154,  201,  43°~43I>  526- 

529- 

Literature,  "  Queen  Anne."  See  Eng 
lish  of  the  Eighteenth  Century. 

Literature  of  the  Regency.  See 
English  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury. 

Literature,  Victorian.  See  English 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

London,  25. 

Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  378- 
392 ;  206,  209,  222,  296,  350,  376, 
377.  393.  394,  395.  396,  397,  398, 
406,  418,  425,  426,  430,  438,  489, 
528. 

Longstreet,  Augustus  Baldwin,  486. 

Lord's  Supper,  in  the  New  England 
Churches,  86,  312-313,  372,  379. 

Lounsbury,  Thomas  Raynesford,  his 
Life  of  Cooper,  182,  183. 


Lowell,  Abbott  Lawrence,  149  «. 

Lowell,  Charles,  393,  442. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  393-406;  170, 
206,  222,  237,  262,  296,  376,  377, 
380-381,  414,  415,  418,  425,  426, 
430,  438,  465,  489,  509,  528;  his 
"  Biglow  Papers,"  477,  508,  511  ; 
his  "  Fable  for  Critics,"  185,  199, 
222,  400,  508  ;  his  essay  on  "  Tho- 
reau,"  339. 

Lowell,  John,  438. 

Lower  Classes  of  New  England,  75- 
76,  102, 242,  332, 337-338,  348,  359, 
362,  396,  402,425,427,  481  ;  of  the 
South.  See  Slavery ;  of  the  West, 
501-502. 

Loyalists,  the  American,  82, 107-108, 
no,  125,  181,  241,  260,  381. 

Lyric  Quality  in  Literature,  216;  in 
Southern  poetry,  495,  498,  499. 

"  Lyrical  Ballads,"  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge's,  68,  145,  159,  162,  189, 
191,  290. 


TVf  ACAULAY,    Lord,    206,    268, 
1V1     526. 

Madison,  James,  117,  118,  120,  150. 
Magazines  in  America.    See  Periodi 
cals. 

Maine,  woods  of,  334,  425,  429. 
Manufactures  of  New  England,  152, 

244,  245,  249,  440. 
Maryborough,   Duke  of,  19,  21,  32,. 

61,  62. 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  207,  217. 
Marshall,  John,  118,  120,  485. 
Mary  Stuart,  Queen,  26. 
Massachusetts,  26,  27,  28,  31,  45,  78, 

94,  no,  120,  122,  192,  193,  234,253, 

255,  262,  263,  278,  351,  356,  358, 

360,  450,  459,  510. 
Massachusetts    Historical    Society, 

31,  261,  262,  263,  267,  274. 
Materialism  in  New  York,  451-454, 

463;    throughout    America,    468, 

505- 
Mather,  Cotton,  44-54;  33,  35»  42, 

43,  70,  7i,  75,  78,  82,  95,  136,  233. 


568 


INDEX 


245,  263,  279,  287,  288,  311, 313, 

334,  409,  436~437»  439- 

Mather,  Increase,  32,  43,  44,  45,  46, 
83.  95>  233.  261. 

Mather,  Richard,  27,  32,  37,  44. 

Medicine,  the  Profession  of,  in  Amer 
ica,  193,  236,  408-409. 

Melodrama,  213-214,  432. 

Melville,  Hermann,  229. 

Merchants  of  New  England,  71-73, 
76,  236,  237,  240-244,  439. 

Methodism,  66,  74-75,  97,  374. 

Mexican  War,  401. 

Middle  States,  or  Colonies,  157-230; 
36,  78,  79,  80,  154,  262,  291,  372, 
449,  463-464,  480.  526,  527- 

Milton,  John,  20,  21,  23,  24,  37,  42, 
55,  65,  68,  69,  136,  387,  523. 

Minto,  William,  206. 

"  Mirror,"  the  New  York,  223,  225, 
226. 

Mitchell,  Donald  Grant,  222. 

Mitchill,  Samuel  Latham,  his  "  Pic 
ture  of  New  York,"  171,  172. 

Modern  Languages  and  Literature, 
study  and  influence  of,  in  America, 
264-265,  292,  296-297,  379-385, 
39°,  393-396.  See  Smith  Profes 
sorship. 

Monroe  Doctrine,  the,  150-151. 

Moore,  Thomas,  69,  193. 

Morris,  George  Pope,  225. 

Morse,  John  Torrey,  Jr.,  his  life  of 
Holmes,  438. 

Motley,  John  Lothrop,  272-273  ;  170, 
280,  371,  376,  437,  438. 

Music,  in  New  England,  296,  297,309. 

"Mutual  Admiration"  in  Boston, 
444- 

Mystery,  Sense  of,  in  America,  163, 
167,  179,  213,  214,  218,  418,  429, 
432- 


J^APOLEON,    61,    62,    128-129, 

139,  140,  150. 
Napoleon  III.,  151. 
"Nasby,    Petroleum   V.,"    512-513, 
5*5- 


"  Nation,"  the,  453,  454. 

Nationality,  in  general,  3.  See  Lan 
guage  ;  of  America,  77.  See  Ideals. 

National  Traits  of  Elizabethan  Eng 
land  (Spontaneity,  Enthusiasm, 
and  Versatility),  19,  21-24,  25,  27, 
64, 67,  69,  522 ;  evident  in  America, 
28,  33,  53,  55,75-77,  m,  "2,  115, 
I3J>  332,  445-446,  522-524,  529- 

Nature,  Sense  of,  in  American  Books, 

273>  333-335,  361-363,  389,  493, 
497-498.  See  Description. 

Navy,  the  American,  181,  244. 

Negro  Minstrel  Shows,  510. 

Nelson,  Lord,  62,  68,  139,  145. 

Newburyport,  343,  360. 

New  England,  26,  27,  28-34,35-43, 
45-53,  55,  70-76,  78-79,  108,  152, 
154,  190,  221,  226,  229,  230,  233- 
446,  449,  455,  462,  465,  471,  480, 

489,  493,  5OI>  5°4,  5J3,  5*4,  523, 

526,  528-530. 

"  New  England  Primer,"  36. 
New  Hampshire,  248,  249,  253,  360, 

455- 

New  Haven,  51,  84,  120,  124. 

New  Jersey,  80,  130,  181,  466. 

Newman,  Cardinal,  526,  528. 

New  Orleans,  73,  233,  486. 

Newspapers  in  America,  79, 157,  183, 
187,  193,  201,  202,  209,  211,  225- 
226,  229,  230,  309,  342,  360,  365, 
400,  449,  455,  458,  507-513,  514- 

S1S>  5J7,  5*8. 
Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  25,  32. 
New   York,  79,   114,    120,  130,   154, 

157,   163,  182,   190,   191,    192-197, 

2OI,  2O4,  2O5,  2IO,  219,  225,  226- 
230,  233,  234,  262,  280,  290,  308, 

3°9,  338,  372,   374,  405»  449-464, 

465-466,   472,  478-479,  489,   5OI» 

5°4,  505,  5!3,  5*4,  5J5- 
Nile,  Battle  of  the,  60,  61,  62,  68, 

139,  145,  146. 
"  North  American  Review,"  the,  194, 

J97>  255,  262,  267,  272,  291,  302, 

370,  404,  436,  443,  453. 
North  and  South,  Divergence  of,  in 

America,    27-28,    151,   495.      See 


INDEX 


569 


Antislavery      Movement,       Civil 

War,  Disunion. 
Northampton,  Massachusetts,  83,  85, 

86,  87,  240. 

Norton,  Charles  Eliot,  262. 
Nova  Scotia,  29,  73. 
Novel,  the  English.    See  Fiction. 


QDYSSEY,  the,  166,  477. 

Old  South  Church  in  Boston, 
224,  247,  263,  288. 

Orations  and  Poems  in  New  Eng 
land,  412,  414. 

Oratory  in  America,  108-109,  112, 
135,  245,  246-259,  260,  262,  270, 
275,  276,  277,  290,  291,  338,  346- 
351.  37i,  372,  439,  443,  485.  4$6, 
528. 

"  Orthodoxy  "  in  New  England,  120- 
123,  223-224,  288-289,  291,  318, 
379,  407-408,  418-423.  See  Cal 
vinism,  Edwards,  Mather,  Puri 
tanism,  Unitarianism. 

Osgood,  Frances  Sargent,  209-210, 
301. 

Otis,  James,  108-109,  no,  112,  120, 
247,  260. 

Ovid.     See  Sandys. 


"DALFREY,  John  Gorham,  272. 

Pamphleteering,  112,  119. 
Pancoast,  H.  S.,  his  "Introduction 

to  American  Literature,"  485-487, 

490. 

Panic  of  1857,  450. 
Park  Street  Church  in  Boston,  224, 

225. 
Parker,  Theodore,  346-348 ;  258,  302, 

304,  308,  352,  366,  371,  439. 
Parkman,  Francis,  273-274;  29,  73, 

280,  371,  438. 
Patriotic  verse  in  America,  120,  125, 

127,  131,  193.     See  F.  O.  Ticknor, 

Timrod,  Whittier. 
Paulding,  James  Kirke,  195. 
Payne,  John  Howard,  1 58. 
Peabody,  Andrew  Preston,  262,  287. 


Pearson,  Eliphalet,  282. 

Pedantry  in  New  England,  326,  397. 

Peirce,  Benjamin,  438. 

Pepys,  Samuel,  19,  32. 

Periodical  Literature  in  America,  79, 
157,  159,  205,  219,  262,  301-304, 
370-377,  404,  449,  453-454*  S1S~ 
517.  See  Newspapers. 

Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  of  Harvard 
College,  194,  255,  313,  412. 

Philadelphia,  78,  92,  93,  96,  97,  98, 
112,  120,  130,  159,  165,  205,  233, 
234,  261,  360,  451. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  348-350 ;  258,352, 
366,  371,  439. 

Phillips,  Willard,  194. 

Philosophy  in  New  England.  See 
Idealism,  Transcendentalism. 

Phips,  Sir  William,  33,  45,  50,  73. 

"Phoenix,  John,"  510-511,  512,  515. 

Pierce,  Franklin,  378,  425,  426. 

Pierrepont,  Sarah  (Mrs.  Edwards), 
84-85. 

Pinckney,  Edward  Coate,  486. 

Pioneers,  Western,  500-501. 

Pitt.     See  Chatham. 

Plan  of  this  book,  10. 

Plots  in  American  Fiction,  185,  188, 
189,  354,  488. 

Plymouth  Colony,  26,  28,  31,  240, 
244,  255-256,  263,  288. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  204-218;  163,  168, 
177,  219,  228,  230,  280,  301,  335, 
338,  386,  432,  433,  449,  477,  4^6, 
516;  his  "Literati,"  220,  487, 
501. 

Poetry,  in  the  Evolution  of  Liter 
ature,  5,  167  ;  in  America,  38-41, 
90-91,  119-134,  186,  191,  192-203, 

206,    209-210,    2II-2I6,    220,     221, 

223,  226,  227,  230,  304,  316,  317, 

361-369,  375,  378-392»  393-403t 
410-415,  443,  457-458,  461,  465- 
479,  481,  489-498,  516,  528;  in 
England,  5,  21-24,  37,  38,  65,  66, 
145-148,  154,  200,  291,  310,  526, 
527,  528. 

Poetry,  Theories  of,  Bryant's,  198; 
Lanier's,  496 ;  Poe's,  211. 


5/0 


INDEX 


Political  Literature  in  America,  78, 
81,  112,  117-119,  136,  180,  190,  209, 
228,  245,  246,  247,  459,  485,  513, 

525- 

Pope,  Alexander,  32,65, 119, 136,415. 

Popularity,  as  a  quality  of  Litera 
ture,  509-510.  See  Humanity. 

Portland,  Maine,  223,  378. 

Portraits,  family,  71,  76,  240-242. 

Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  248, 

375- 
Precocity  in  literature,  197,  360. 

(Prescott,  William  Hickling,  268-271 ; 
267,  272,  275,  280,  371,  438;  his 
Life  of  Brockden  Brown,  159,  160. 
,-Pfesent  Time,  the,  514-518. 
Prince,  Thomas,  his  "  Annals,"  263. 
Princeton  College,  79,  83,  85,  130. 
Printing-presses    in   America  about 

1800,  157. 

Prohibition  in  America,  103,  506. 
Property,  Right  of,  340,  344,  345, 346, 

356. 

Prose,  in  the  Evolution  of  Litera 
ture,  5,  167;  in  America,  44-52, 
78-82,84-89,  94-101, 162-164,  T72- 
176,  191,  206-214,  216,  222-223, 
226,  230,  246-276,  312-314,  320- 

324,  335-336,  353-355,  404-405, 
417-420,  422,  425-435,  459-461, 
466,  483,  488,  507-513,  514-518, 
528 ;  in  England,  5,  22-25,  37,  53, 
65,  66,  146-148,  154,  174,  184,  201, 
206,  526,  527,  528. 

Protestantism,  70.     See  Liberalism. 

Public  Speaking,  Popularity  of,  in 
New  England,  246-249,  255,  317. 

"Puck,"  453,  461. 

Puritanism,  in  England,  14,  20,  24, 
25, 29, 31, 33, 107,  517,  523 ;  in  New 
England,  28-31,  33,  38,  42,  44,  46, 
48,  50,  52,  55,  70,  74,  75,  95,  102, 
120,  163,  184,  294,  296,  299,  309, 
3*o>  371-372,  416,  423,  429,  43o, 
432~433»  434,  446,  469,  523,  524, 
525,  529.  See  Calvinism. 

Purity  of  Temper,  Instinctive  in 
America,  189,  217,  218,  276,  307, 
310,327,405,424,434,445-446,517. 


QUAKERISM  in  America,  75, 80- 
K,    81,  299,  341,  358,  365,  367,  455, 

465- 
"Quality"   in   New   England.      See 

Aristocracy. 

"Quarterly  Review,"  192,  262. 
Quebec,  73;  Battle  of,  60,  61,  62,  74. 


TJADCLIFFE,     Mrs.,     67;     her 
±V     "Mysteries  of   Udolpho,"  68, 

160,  161,  163. 
Railways,  transcontinental,  152,440; 

in  New  England,  244,  440. 
Ralegh,  Sir  Walter,  4,  18,  21,  22,  24, 

27,  32,^37,  I31- 
Rationalism  in  New  England,  417- 

420. 

Raymond,  Henry  Jarvis,  455. 
Refinement    in   American   writings, 

180,  203,  218,  228. 
Reform  Bill  of  1832,  107,  140-141, 

145,   146,   148,  198,  220,  290,  525, 

526. 
Reformers  in  New  England,  229,  245, 

300,   303,   304-305,   338,   339-340, 

359,  37i,  372,  398,  416,  441,  528. 

See  Antislavery  Movement,  Brook 

Farm. 

Regency,  of  George  IV.,  139,  147. 
Relaxation    of    Social    Pressure    in 

America,  33,  53,  89,  102,  501.     See 

Density,  Inexperience. 
Religion  in  New  England.     See  Cal 
vinism,  Puritanism,  Unitarianism. 
Religion  and  Life,  in  America,  90, 

95-100,  102-103. 
Religious  literature  in  America.    See 

Theological. 
Renaissance,  of  Europe,  17, 178,245, 

259,  297,  394- 
Renaissance  of  New  England,  the, 

233-446;   154,  206,   245,   258-259, 

3°3>  372,  429-430,  469,  5H,  528- 

530- 
Representation,  conflicting  theories 

of,  107,  1 1 6. 
Restoration,  the,  13,  21,  24,  29,  31, 


INDEX 


Retardation  of  Development  in 
America,  32,  123,  126,  130,  151, 
174,  201,  275-276,  357,  416,  446, 
483,  484,  489,  522-529.  See  Den 
sity,  Inexperience. 

Reversion,  Social,  in  America,  504. 

Revolution,  the  American,  104-116; 
63.67,71,73,75,  76,  79,  81,  103, 
117,  121,  130,  134,  152,  160,  169, 
172,  175,  180,  185,  204,  240-242, 
247,  253,  258,  260,  268,  346,  382, 
437,  481,  484,  485,  524-525. 

Revolution,  the  Constitutional,  in 
England,  140,  144,  148.  See  Re 
form  Bill. 

Revolution,  the  French,  61,  63,  115- 
116,  140,  310,  345,  467,  471;  its 
abstract  philosophy,  63-64,  109, 
467;  its  rationalism,  66,  161,  417, 
423.  See  Revolutionary  Spirit. 

Revolution  of  1688,  the,  13,  21,  29, 

523- 

Revolutionary  Spirit,  its  view  of 
Human  Nature,  102,  145-146,  186, 
300,  332,  339,  443,  467,  coo,  528- 
529 ;  its  contrasting  manifestations, 
in  England  and  France,  68,  145  j 
in  Europe  and  America,  290-293, 
310.  See  Transcendentalism,  Uni- 
tarianism. 

Rhetoric  in  New  England,  248,  253- 
257,  259,  270,  404. 

Rhodes,  James  Ford,  his  "History 
of  the  United  States,"  351, 

Richardson,  Samuel,  66,  68,  160. 

Richmond,  Virginia,  204,  205,  341. 

Right  and  Rights,  English  and 
American  Ideal  of,  8,  14,  64,  115- 
116,  467,  521,  524,  525,  529;  Di 
vergence  of,  see  Disunion, 
American  Revolution;  French 
ideal  of,  63,  109-110;  see  Revolu 
tionary  spirit. 

Ripley,  George,  229,  286,  302,  303, 
305,  308,  455. 

Roe,  Edward  Payson,  461. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  67,  69. 

Romanticism,  431-432  ;  in  America, 
162-163,  I74-I75»  J77,  I79»  T95> 


200,  203,  310,  334,  384-387,  390- 
391,  416-417,  432-434,  4^8-489, 
496,  498,  529;  in  England,  145- 
146,  160-161,  174,  526,  527,  529. 

Ross,  David  Locke,  512. 

Rumford,  Count,  261. 

Ruskin,  John,  147,  431,  526,  528. 

Ryland's  "  Chronological  Outlines 
of  English  Literature,"  2o«.,  22, 
35  «•,&>• 


§T.  LOUIS,  73,  233,  451. 

Salem,  244,  251,  425,  426,  429. 

See  Witchcraft. 
San  Domingo,  Insurrection  in,  345, 

482. 
Sandys,  George,  his  translation  of 

Ovid,  27,  36,  484. 
San  Francisco,  233,  451. 
Satire  in  America,  90-91,   101,  113, 

119,  122-126,  130,   193,   196,  400- 

403,411,  420-421,  459,  508,  512- 

5i3' 
Saturday  Club  of  Boston,  376-377, 

437-439»  444- 

Scholarship  in  New   England,   245, 
260-276,  277,   290,  291,  295,  326, 

338»  347,  371,  393-397,  443,  528- 
Science,  English,  25,  148  ;  in  Amer 
ica,  see  Cotton  Mather,  Franklin. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  67,  134,   145,  146, 
147,  148,  183,  184,  185,  189,  190, 
191,   192,  193,  198,  220,  230,  290, 
481,  488,  529 ;  his  "  Waverley  Nov 
els,"  146,   154,   174,184,526;  his 
"  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  389. 
"  Scribner's    Magazine,"    453,    454, 

459- 
"  Scriptures  "  in  New  England,  303, 

3*4,  3l8»33I»372,  445. 
Sea,   American    Books    about   the. 

See  Cooper,  Dana,  Melville. 
Seabury,  Samuel,  no,  in. 
Secession,  105,  255.     See  Civil  War 

in  America,  Disunion. 
Second  Church  of  Boston,   44,   71, 

288,311-313,326. 
Sedgmoor,  Battle  of,  59. 


572 


*\ptDEX 


Sentimentality   in   Literature,    200- 

201.     See  Romanticism. 
Sewall,  Samuel,  31,  32,  33,  246,  341  ; 

his  Diary,  234,  236,  263. 
Seward,  William  Henry,  222. 
Shakspere,  4,  5,  20,  21,  22,  23, 24,  26, 

27,  32,  37.  4*>  42,  50,  $5, 65,  68,  69, 

136,  184,  217,  248,  253,  302,  315, 

445.  458.  469.  523- 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  146,  147, 
160,  161,  165,  174,  193,  291,  526, 

527- 

Shepard,  Thomas,  52. 

Short  Stories  as  a  Form  of  Litera 
ture,  168,  174,  176-177,  191,  211- 
214,  226,  237,  43°-434,  461,  477. 
486,  506,  515-518.  See  Fiction. 

Sibley,  John  Langdon, his"  Harvard 
Graduates,"  47. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  26. 

Simms,  William  Gilmore,  480,  486, 
487-489,  491,  492. 

Slavery,  Negro,  151,  340-346,  482. 
See  Antislavery  Movement. 

Smith,  Captain  John,  35,  484. 

Smith  Professorship  at  Harvard 
College,  264-265,  266,  296,  379- 
381,  393,  406.  See  Longfellow,  J. 
R.  Lowell,  George  Ticknor. 

Smollett,  Tobias,  65,  68. 

Socialism  in  New  England.  See 
Brook  Farm. 

Social  Relations  of  American  Men 
of  Letters,  Abroad,  170,  225,  264, 
35°»  396J  at  Home,  181,  188,  206, 
228,  338.  376,408-410,  465,  511- 
512.  ^Distinction. 

Society,  Structure  of  American,  in 
New  England,  71-73,  75,  92-94, 
193,  224,  234-244,  248,  258,  266, 
288,  326,  371,  378,  410,  436-441, 
481  ;  in  the  South,  206,  481-483 
487-488. 

South,  the,  151,  152,  341,  356-357, 
480-499,  504,  513,  514.  See  North 
and  South. 

South  Carolina,  234,  351,  489;  Nul 
lification  in,  198,  487,  491.  See 
Charleston. 


"  Southern  Literary  Messenger," 
205,  219,  486. 

Southey,  Robert,  61,  67. 

Spain,  American  delight  in  the 
romance  of,  177-178,  270-271, 
272;  war  with,  in  1898,  150,  152. 

Sparks,  Jared,  262,  267-268,  270, 
273,  284  ;  his  "  Library  of  Ameri 
can  Biography,"  159,  268. 

"  Spectator,"  the,  66,  79,  94,  95,  118, 

120,  124. 

Spenser,  4,  5,  26,  27. 
Spontaneity.     See  National  Traits. 
"  Springfield  Republican,"  the,  459. 
Stedman,    Edmund     Clarence,     his 

"Poets  of    America,"   385,     415, 

416,  417. 
Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  "  Library 

of   American   Literature,"   35   «., 
123,  157.  195.  208,  220,  341,  460, 

461,  481,  492,  508. 
Stedman  and  Woodberry's  edition 

of  Poe,  207,  208,  212. 
Steele,  Sir  Richard,  65,  167. 
Stelligeri,  414  «. 
Stephens,      Alexander      Hamilton, 

483-484. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  147,    176, 

229,  527. 

Stoddard,  Richard  Henry,  222. 
Stoddard,  Solomon,  83,  86. 
Stowe,  Harriet   Beecher,   352-356  ; 

366,  371 ;  her  "  Old  Town  Folks," 

237  ;    her  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," 

388. 
Struggle  for  existence,  16,  17, 18,  33, 

53- 
Stuart,    Gilbert,  64,   241-243,   248, 

345- 
Style,  Literary,  in  America,  38,  41, 

53.  95,  101,  162, 166,  173,  175,  177, 

l83,  *93,  197,  199,  201,  211,  216, 

226,  250-253,  257,  267,   269-270, 

272,   274,  276,  323-324,  335-336, 

354,  363>  390,  397,  404,  428,  459, 

47i,  473-478,  492,  495,  49S,  507. 

See  Dialect,  Extracts. 
Sumner,  Charles,  170,  258,  348,  350- 

351.352,371,387,438,483. 


INDEX 


573 


Surrey,  Earl  of,  38. 

Survival  of  the  fittest,  17. 

Swift,  Jonathan,  65,  112,  136,  172. 


"'pATLER,"  the,  66,  79,  118. 

"  Taxation  without  Represen 
tation,"  107. 

Taylor,  Bayard,  222,  229,  455-458. 

Taylor,  Father,  373. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  20,  23. 

Teaching,  Professional,  by  Men  of 
Letters,  380,  395,  397.  See  Long 
fellow,  Lowell,  Ticknor. 

Temple,  Sir  William,  25,  40. 

Tennyson,  147,  209,  526,  528. 

Thackeray,  William  Makepeace, 
147,  176,  206,  415,  526,  528. 

Theocracy,  in  England,  17;  in  New 
England,  42,  44-46,  48,  70,  83,  95, 
235.  See  Calvinism,  Puritanism. 

Theological  literature  in  America, 
36,41,43,  78,80,83-91,  1  10,  119, 
121,  122,  123,  136,  180,  190,  209, 
228,  246,  247,  263,  274,  292,  325, 
437,  523>  525;  iu  England,  37, 
119. 

Thorfifm-     Henry   David,   332-337  ; 

~  302,  328,  338,  339,  371,  3757398-, 
489. 

Ticknor,   Francis   Orrery,  489-490, 

499- 
Ticknor,  George,  264-267  ;  170,  268, 

270,  271,  280,  296,  37%  379-381, 

393»  395'  4o6,  418,  437- 
Timrod,    Henry.  486,   4QL  492-49^ 
~~~ 


Town  Histories  in  New  England, 
264. 

Tories,  see  Loyalists. 

Trafalgar,  Battle  of,  62,  139. 

Transcendentalism  in  New  England, 
290-310;  245,  311,  324,  330,  333, 
338-340,  346,  347,  359,  37i,  372, 
379,  384-,  386,  416,  418,  429,  432, 
441,  485,  528.  See  Revolutionary 
Spirit. 

Translations  of  American  books, 
183,  207. 


Translations  in  Elizabethan  litera 
ture,  5,  20,  22,  27,  484 ;  in  Ameri 
ca,  198,  391,  456,  458. 

Trent,  W.  P.,  480,  487-488,  491. 

"Tribune,"  the  New  York,  229, 
230,  300,  308,  309,  449,  454-455. 
456. 

Trollope,  Anthony,  176. 

Trollope,  Mrs.,  502,  503. 

Trumbull,  John,  123-126;  120,  129. 

Tudor,  William,  262. 

Twain,  Mark,  101,  173,  271,  508,  513; 
his  "  Huckleberry  Finn,"  342,  477, 
503. 

Tyler,  Moses  Coit,  35 «.,  40;  his 
"Literary  History  of  the  Ameri 
can  Revolution,"  104,  107,  112, 
134,  485- 


TJNION,  the  ideal  of,   105,   151, 

345- 

Unitarianism  in  New  England,  277- 
289;  90,  122,  224,  245,  267,  273, 
290,  291,  292,  295,  299,  303,  304, 
308,  309,  311,  314,  326,  338,  341, 
342,  346,  347,  353,  359,  371,  372, 
379,  384,  393,  407-409,  418-419, 
422,  441-442,  443,  528.  See  Re 
volutionary  Spirit. 

United  States,  6,  7,  29,  127,  149-153, 
169.  See  Constitution,  Law. 

Universities,  the  Office  of,  383. 

University  of  Pennsylvania,  79,  93. 


VERSATILITY,  see  National 
Traits. 

Victoria,  Queen,  139,  141,  142,  144, 
154,  169,  511,  525,  526. 

Virginia,  26,  27,  35,  37,  108,  120, 
152,  190,  204,  206,  234,  481,  484, 
485,  487,  523 ;  University  of,  204. 

Voltaire,  99,  115,  423. 


^"ALTON,  Izaak,  20,  23,  31,  37. 

WTar  of  1812,  150,  160,  244. 
"  Ward,  Artemus,"  511-512,  515. 


574 


INDEX 


Ward,  Nathaniel,  his  "Simple 
Cobbler  of  Agawam,"  508. 

Ware,  Henry,  282. 

Ware,  Henry,  Jr.,  311. 

Warren,  Joseph,  247,  260. 

Washington,  George,  64,  76,  92,  117, 
120,  151,  268,  357,  485;  Weems's 
Life  of,  159. 

Washington,  City  of,  233,  451,  466. 

Waterloo,  Battle  of,  61, 140,  145, 146, 

S25-526- 
Wealth  in  New  England,  71-73,  242, 

248-249,  378,  440;  in  New  York, 

463;  in  the  West,  441. 
Webster,  Daniel,  247-253,  255,  257, 

280,  291,  354,  371,  437,  439,  485, 

491;  Whittier's  poems  on,  367-369. 
Welde,  Thomas,  37. 
Wesley,  John,  66,  74. 
West,  the,  500-51 3;  30,152,441,514. 
West  Church  of  Boston,  442. 
West  Point  Military  Academy,  205. 
Whigs  of  Massachusetts,  249,  255, 

257- 

Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  438. 

Whitcomb's  "  Chronological  Out 
lines  of  American  Literature,"  35, 
36,  78,  461. 

White,  Richard  Grant,  458-459. 

Whitefield,  George,  74,  75,  97-99. 

Whitman,  Walt,  464,  465-479. 

Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  358-369, 
388-389;  197,  237,  371,  376,  425, 
426,  430,  438,  460,  465,  481,  489, 
493.  495.  5°9>  528- 


Wigglesworth,  Michael,  36,  39,  78. 
Wilkins,  Mary  Eleanor,  237. 
William  III.,  7,  13,  25,  32,  33,  45,  53, 

55.  59,  60.  79,  357- 

William  IV.,  139,  140,  141,  143, 
147. 

Williams  College,  193,  461. 

Williams,  Roger,  27,  32,  50,  77. 

Willis,  Nathaniel  Parker,  222-230; 
207,  208,  280,  288,  449. 

Wills,  George  Stockton,  480. 

Winslow,  Edward,  26,  32. 

Winsor,  Justin,  his  "  Memorial  His 
tory  of  Boston,"  287. 

Winthrop,  John,  26,  31,  32,  50,  77, 
357;  his  History,  31,  263. 

Winthrop,  Professor  John,  261. 

Winthrop,  Robert  Charles,  258,  280, 

439- 

Wirt,  William,  485. 
Wister,  Owen,  504. 
Witchcraft  at  Salem,  33,  45-46. 
Woodworth,  Samuel,  195. 
Woolman,  John,  80-8 1,  299. 
Wordsworth,   William,  67,  69,  145, 

146,  162,  174,  201,  228,  291,  399, 

526,  527. 
World's  Fair  of  1893,  505-506. 


COLLEGE,  75,  78,  79,  83, 

I2O,  T2I,  122,  123,  124,  126,  129, 

181,  224,  225,  352,  407,  486. 
Yellow  Fever  in  New  York,  163-164. 
"Youth's  Companion,"  the,  224. 


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